


Amber Skies

by THECARETAKER



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:33:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 67
Words: 70,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23859124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/THECARETAKER/pseuds/THECARETAKER
Comments: 428
Kudos: 860





	1. She woke to find herself in a boxcar full of corpses

She awoke to a boxcar full of corpses, 

which was damn lucky, because it meant she now had a one-way train ticket to exactly where she wanted to go. All that was left to do was pass the time.

The student took inventory of her body. It was the first thing she knew to do in case of catastrophic injury, but the ritual of it was almost meditative now. Start at the bottom, work your way up. 

Feet: Sore from walking. The leathery sheathe of mutagenic skin that ran up to her shins was largely unfeeling scar tissue at this point. They looked and functioned like a pair of high-topped hiking boots, except permanent and a part of her body. They were a rough custom job, designed for traversing the pools of acid that dotted the necrotic swamps common to her homeland. Home. Not much left of home now. She was getting sidetracked.

Legs: Also sore from walking, but less so. The musculature was hers, but the skeleton was reinforced with carbon-steel after a fall when she was little. Shock absorbing hydraulic femurs were nice for someone who did as much walking as she did. Skin was necrotizing again. Gotta get that replaced. Maybe one of the corpses is fresh enough to provide a graft. 

Pelvis: Mercifully unfeeling. The surveyor had grabbed her by the hips. Skeleton was completely replaced a long time ago, but she could feel a hitch in the joint of her left leg whenever she moved it just so. An easy fix but time consuming, and not the sort of work to be done on a moving train. No necrotization here, at this point it was all synthetic. Uterus was completely original, not that it meant much. The little bundle of braided tubes that assisted her endocrine system remained stapled to her skin. The jangling was annoying, kept getting stuck on her hatchet, thus, staples. Fluids were looking a little dark, she must be dehydrated. 

Torso: Felt fine, aside from the strain on her spine from carrying her things. Even with the augments, spines in general were just poorly constructed. Flesh was scarred, lots of burns, but mostly original. Both clavicles were removed and replaced with cargo sockets. She rolled her shoulders, it seemed like everything was working well. Breasts and sternum had been removed too, replaced with subdermal bulletproofing. She had spent extra for the good stuff there. One solid hand-ground piece of sloped armor. Getting shot in the lung was a lesson you only needed to learn once. Heart was completely mechanical. She even had a backup in her bag just in case. She traded the old lung and the breast tissue for that. 

Right Arm: She rolled back the sleeve of her heavy coat and stretched her arm, watching the little electric motors dance. It was strong and dexterous, with half a dozen small tools built into the length of her forearm. No need for skin. In a pinch she could perform everything from network intrusion to basic surgery. Most of it was covered by the sleeve of her heavy coat. The amputation was above the elbow. She had leased her original arm for the current mechanical one when she was working on the pit crew for for an order of knights. She ended up keeping the arm. 

Left Arm: She liked her left arm. She was proud of it. The trademark of a sythetimancer. It was pretty. Biological and mechanical features blending seamlessly together. Coils of veins and circuitry making intricate braids up her arm terminating in perfect Fibonacci spirals. Softly bioluminescent blood, filaments formed from calcified nerve tissue, synapse clusters under crystal clear de-pigmented bulbs of alpha-keratin. She concentrated for a moment, allowing the whirls on her palm to twist and readjust themselves with a tingling sensation. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, all recombining into butane. She snapped her fingers, igniting a tiny flame, letting it dance along her fingers for a few moments burning and repairing the flesh as she went, spirals parting and coalescing like leaves navigating the twain of a gentle river. They looked like the little shell fossils she found at the white desert when she was little. Memories. Loss. 

The spirals in her hand began to twist and pulse, little corkscrews of bone began to form, growing outwards against the thin layer of biosynthetic skin. It hurt. She winced, and regained control a moment later. Careless. She shook her arm, and the flame on her finger went out. 

Head: Still a bit hazy from the pain. Where to start with the head? Neck. Parched. Currently being warmed by a scarf with a length of handmade maille hidden in the folds. Rebreather was working well because it was made well. It was made well because she made it. She made it because it used to be her job. Like everyone of her strain, she had no teeth, only two solid ridges of tough bone, largely blunt and made for gnashing but gradually coalescing into a single triangular point, evolved for ripping flesh. She clacked her jaws together experimentally. Clack. Clack. 

Eyes were tired and dry. There was a short mechanical hiss and a snap as she the shields over her eyes retracted back into their sockets in her cheekbones. The only light was from a pair of grates in the ceiling, but the glare nearly blinded her. She snapped the shields back into place, and the heads up display came slowly back into focus. 

Originally her skin was the sort of rust color common to her strain. By now it was a deep weather-worn red, except for the parts that were charred black and rotting. Gotta replace that. If she could grow hair, she had done a damn good job of making sure it was thoroughly singed off. It occurred to her that it might be fun to have hair one day. Maybe she could make it herself. Would it grow in spirals? She looked down to open the bag of genebending tools at her waist, and her heart jumped into her goddamn throat. 

Staring up at her from the pile of corpses was a pair of bright red eyes on an unnaturally pale face with no nose or lips. Which would not be terribly upsetting or surprising, had it not just said “well met” in an oddly pleasant female voice, attempt to sit up, fail, and then ask politely if its new acquaintance would stop sitting on it.


	2. Part Prison, Part Morgue

The facility was part prison, part morgue, part recycling center

and it had clearly seen better days. Below the train depot was a large, bare, concrete pit. The train cars were placed over it, and upended by a pair of mechanical arms that unceremoniously dumped the contents of the box car into the pit below where they were to be picked through by attendants who combed the pile for useful things like functioning brains, testicles, circuitry, mold, etc.

But the attendants were long dead. Seemingly destroyed and gutted for parts by something not dead enough to fight back. Without the attendants to sort through the deliveries of corpses, one would expect the pit to be stuffed to the brim with bodies, but this was not so. Due to some sabotage or malfunction, an entire train car had been dropped squarely in the center of the pit. It had smashed like a battering ram straight through the concrete floor. It now sat at an awkward angle, one end against the mouth of the crater, the other submerged into the current of dark fluid into which the corpses would fall and quickly vanish, floating away to some unknown place downstream.

The drop from the car to the floor of the pit was only about 10 meters. the student landed on the rusted boxcar below with a thunderous clang, followed by the soft hiss of the hydraulic shock absorbers recoiling from the impact. The teacher followed a moment later, landing soundlessly on all fours like a cat. As she righted herself, her eyes swept the room warily. She spoke in a whisper.

“We should keep moving. We cant know what’s still alive in this place.“

There were many exits from the pit, but the metal doors seemed to lack power, or were simply bent out of shape, unable to slide open. One door was propped open with a bundle of metal pipes wedged into the mechanism. From them hung several braids of red wire or cloth tipped with rivets or screws wrapped around one end. Cairns. The universal symbol of pathfinders, people had been this way before. 

Being the faster of the two, the student went first, ducking under the little curtain. The teacher walked through the unblinking, the bits of metal clattering against her face. The student gave her an odd look, but received the same blank look. After a moment, the teacher pulled back her lipless face into a thin conciliatory smile. Under threat of further weirdness, the student elected to simply accept her new companions idiosyncrasies. 

There was light in the train depot, so it had to have its own power system. As the pair progressed into the depts of the facility it only became darker and darker. The student took off the sleeve over her left arm and concentrated for a moment. A gentle warmth passed through the arm and the little glowing nodes started to grow brighter and brighter. The light was uneven and faint, but it served its purpose enough in the sheer dark. 

The teacher followed suit, a pale hand from the fold of her robes and a snap of her chitinous fingers called a brilliant lithium flame, its deep scarlet light mixed with the students pale blue, casting the corridors in an alien violet. 

The students light nearly faltered as she stared in wonder at the scarlet fire. She hated lithium. Any genebender did. It was used in small amounts complex reactions, but its highly flammable, toxic, corrosive, and so reactive it can explode on contact with both air and water, and judging by the sheer amount she was working with, the teachers biology had to be lithium based. 

The teachers eyes were hidden under her hood, but the student was sure she was just caught staring. The ghost of a smile passed across the teachers face. Her fingers rotated unnaturally, curling to sit parallel with her palm, and the flame warped, coiling into a corkscrew shape. By the gods it was beautiful. She could have watched for ages. That much control over her biology, it was enthralling. Like watching a landscape in time-lapse, dying and growing and dying and growing, ever reshaping itself into new spirals, the elemental mathematics of chaos displayed with living, breathing will. Who was this woman? What was she? 

Her light went out. Fear shot down the students spine. As she tried to back away, she tripped and stumbled against the wall. Oh gods what was she? 

The last thing the student saw was the teacher reaching out to her, but retracting her hand. The scarlet flame went out. 

And there they stayed for a long moment. The only sound was labored, fearful breathing in the dark. 

“What are you?“

Another long pause. For a moment the student thought that perhaps she had slipped away into the quiet dark. 

When the teacher finally spoke, it was with a distant sadness that was all too familiar to the student. She spoke with the gentle, deep, exhaustion of one with fond memories of a home that could never, ever, be returned to. 

“Only a ghost now. Only a ghost.“

The words, though vague and not an answer, were of the familiar sort and softened the students guard a moment. 

“I mean you no harm. Please. If you can trust me until we find a place to make camp and rest for the night, I will answer any question I am able.“

Another pause. 

“I did not mean to frighten you.“

The students light flicked back to life. Revealing her standing. Leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. The shields over her eyes flicked open, revealing a suspicious, chastising glare.

The teacher was standing with her head dipped low, hands clasped together in apparent shame, which looked almost comical with her monstrous physiology. The student broke the silence.

“The lithium flame. Can you teach me how to do that?”

There was no hesitation in the teachers response. The sadness and timidity were gone. It was the voice of confidence built by countless years practice, of abilities tested until they broke and reformed a dozen times over like calcified bones. It was a deep, ancient, cardinal confidence that, at the time, the student could not understand the true depth of. 

“Yes.”


	3. The Priestess

It took a while to recognize that what she was looking at was a face on account of its lack of a mouth or eyes. In a triumph of critical thinking, the student realized that the face was attached to a body. The body, specifically, of a priestess. One of the ones with no face. The student couldnt remember what their god was called. It was long and complicated and her head hurt. The biology of their god had no need for such senses, so the clergy would undergo a regimen of holy rituals that slowly reabsorb the facial features into the skull, leaving only faint fleshy indents where they used to be. The entirety of the head was covered in a chalky substance that flaked away in small parts when the priestess moved about the room. It was pale yellow in color, denoting the lowest rank. 

The student attempted to open her mouth to ask the questions one would expect of someone in her situation, like “Where am I?” “Where is my companion?” “Who are you?” etc. But when she tried, she was overcome with a wave of nausea. A series of alerts on her HUD flashed a panicked orange, but her eyes couldn’t focus enough to read them. She didn’t seem to be in any danger, and elected to stop moving. This choice has nothing to do with the fact that her head was throbbing. She noticed a pervasive smell. Some sort of incense. That brought back memories.

At that very moment, as if alerted by some invisible siren, the priestesses head snapped around to face the student. The motion of her neck was accompanied by a series of popping and clicking sounds, the result of a biology still in transition. Vestigial disused vertebrae scraping against interlocking plates of chitin. It sounded painful. A bit of the nausea returned and it made her head spin.

The priestesses head moved like a pigeons, remaining completely level as she approached. She was small, standing just barely above a meter and a half. Most of her upper body was covered in the garment she wore, which seemed to be decorated with hundreds of pale yellow feathers the same color as the dye she wore on her head. Her arms were thin, folded close to her heart and clutching a long simple staff tipped with a censor that was likely the source of the smell. The staff was taller than she was. Her lower body was in the midst of a dramatic change. Instead of legs, she possessed a long, serpentine tail that was still kinked about halfway down and again just before the tip. Presumably the remnants of the ankles and knees yet to be completely reabsorbed back into the body. The elegance of her movement was largely uninterrupted by the unfinished tail. However, the kinks made a soft, rhythmic, plopping sound while she moved as they slapped against the floor.

Pap. Pap. Pap. Pap. Pap.

Why was she staring so intently? Wait. How could she be staring? She didn’t have eyes. Whatever. She was dizzy and her head hurt. 

The priestess was standing over her now, seeming to survey the student for injuries. For just a moment the priestesses whole torso seemed to shudder, rustling the cloak of feathers. The student seemed to remember something. She began to reach out with her biosynthetic hand, the one that could feel, to touch the priestesses coat with the back of her hand. It looked very soft. The priestess watched intently as the strangers hand moved towards her, and inched a bit closer to make contact easier. The student was right. It was warm and clean and soft. It was a rare feeling nowadays. Warm clean soft things were in short supply. The sensation seemed to ground the student, and her head began to clear. 

After what seemed like too short a time for the student, the priestess took her charges hand, and guided it gently back to the cot that the rest of her was laying on. Her hands were avian and scaly, tipped with long talons, but the motion was exceedingly careful. Then she gestured as if to say “Wait here a moment”, and slithered out of sight. 

Pap. Pap. Pap. Pap.

She returned a few minutes later, guiding the Teacher by the hand. She had to stoop and crouch to make up for the height difference. Upon noticing her now conscious friend, she rushed over to the cot. The student, invigorated by the presence of her friend, gave a smile and a thumbs up. 

She sighed. Half relief, half exasperation. As she turned to address the priestess, the student thought she noticed a subtle change in her demeanor. Her voice and meaning were genuine, but there was a hint of distance to it, a reluctance. She nodded to the priestess, the shadow of a bow in her spine.

“Thank you“ she said, “For everything youve done“

The student was surprised when the priestess bowed back, evidently deferring to the Teacher as a superior. She was even more surprised to watch as the cloak of feathers seemed to unfold off her body, for it wasn’t a cloak at all. Jutting from the priestesses body at irregular angles and positions was more than half a dozen large, feathered, wings. Useless for flight, their main function was to cover what lay beneath. A blessing. An exercise in worship. As above, so below.

Eggs. Thousands of them, of wildly different sizes and shapes and natures, all quietly incubating under skin that rippled and bulged and swelled with the scars of the legions of children born before, and ready to be rent again by the children growing now, all sheltered by the insulating warmth of the cloak of feathers. Even now, the student could see the pale, winged insects that worked as drones, tending to the sleeping flock. A thousand thousand tiny holy soldiers at the bidding of their host, their hive queen, their very own god.


	4. End of the Line

The rain was slowly burning a hole in the concrete.

It made a soft hissing sound as it dripped from the sagging support beam onto an upturned brick of concrete. Every time the rain made contact it, melted a little more of the rough, porous stone into a smooth, cylindrical hole. The priestess was “kneeling” next to it, her tail coiled around her waist, arms tucked under her wings for warmth, watching intently. Occasionally she would adjust the brick of concrete a little bit. She was making a flower pot. These little brick-pots were all over the place, baring little horns of fungus or gnarled little shrubs. It seemed to be a pastime, how the priestess kept busy while the residents of the temple slept. 

The sound was hypnotizing. The bass of the ever-present storm backed the irregular staccato hum of rain playing on the acid-resistant metal roof and the crackle of the fire, all coalescing around the steady plink-hiss-plink-hiss on the concrete brick. It was almost jazzy, and it played on something deep in the Students mind. A deep genetic memory of what rain used to mean, a long long time ago. Her mind wandered.

The tiny temple settlement was built into a tiny outcropping on the side of a sheer cliff, an estuary of civilization and normalcy built on the place where the towering walls of grey metal that made up the outer megacity, met the inhospitable umber mountain on which they were built. The transport rails to the recycling center hugged the wall of the cliff as if it were trying to hide from the rain, emerging from one tunnel and quickly disappearing into another. The rail had long fallen into disrepair, all clogged with empty train cars picked clean by scavengers. Running parallel to the line was the service tunnel that the travelers used, and as far as anyone could tell, it was the only passage in and out of the city itself. 

It was the remains of an engineering outpost. Which, in terms of places anyone would want to be, was only barely a step above the recycling prison. The Student had heard stories of these places. The old POWs would talk about them with that sort of humor that meant they were distancing themselves from painful memories. Even now, the engineering outposts were infamous for being hopeless places. Exile was preferable. 

Being assigned to the outer walls meant the hard, mindless labor repairing the endless, slow endless damage of the boiling acid rain, and more often than not, the work was done in the rain. The only thing keeping workers from a sheer drop down the mountainside into the wasteland below was a length of thick wire, maybe a service clamp if they were lucky. A thick cable sure, but it was one cable versus sudden windstorms, heavy bladed industrial tools with explosive fuel and shuddering motors, and other stranger things. 

It meant dealing with the wild and lost things that lived in the abandoned sections of the outer walls. Hungry things with empty eyes and reaching hands that still wander the lower levels, left to rot when the generators died. There were even stories of things descending out of the clouds and snatching up laborers before disappearing back into the storm. Things that moved so fast they outpaced the eyes. 

These were places crewed by the desperate and downtrodden, full of debt prisoners, violent criminals, and fugitives. Even the foremen, who were meant to keep order, were known for sadism and corruption. 

The place even looked like a prison block. All lifeless grey concrete and sterile graphene steel. Two stories, each with two stacks of hab units, a rectangle about the width and length of a mattress, plus enough room to sit up. The ends of the rows had larger rooms, presumably for the foreman and infirmary. It was structured like a square horseshoe, curling around the garage/repair stage for the larger machinery. It was built to be economical, to serve a distinct and mindless function, it was housing in the sense that a brass case is housing for a bullet. It was built to be inhospitable, devoid of life. 

Or, this is what it used to be structured like. 

In the years since the cities collapse, this particular outpost had fallen to disrepair. The rainshield had all but fallen off, and had been chopped up to reinforce other parts of the settlement. Thus large parts were eaten away completely by the rain, burning large holes into the ceilings and floors, exposing it to the sun. And from these pits came huge stalks of pale necrovegitation that seemed to impale the settlement and curl about it. The Student thought it looked like something with too many fingers trying to hold on to a bunch of brass knuckles that had all been melted together into the vague shape of a labor camp. The Teacher thought it resembled a human heart, in the midst of being torn from a steel chest by some ropy, prehensile appendage. 

The student thought about the immense weight of the city above them. The boiling rain eating away at the roof, the deep vegetation slowly ripping it apart, the suffering tempered into the walls. This rickety little place, like a wound in the side of some gargantuan beast, was surviving all of it. It could have no better name, this place at the fringes of so many titanic forces, this place just off the edge of so many maps.

As the sound of the rain finally dragged her off to sleep, she stared at the letters burned into the old service board.

End of the Line.


	5. The Sorcerer

There was a sound like roughly two dozen telepathically controlled insects pushing aside a tent flap

as the priestess shuffled up to the makeshift sleeping quarters. A pale yellow head peering around the door frame. Her body language made it evident she did not mean to frighten and wished to show the Student something.

Morning had come, and the rain had stopped for the time being. Below, the other residents of the little chapel were milling about in the pale grey light, enjoying the air while it lasted. The student could see her teacher sitting cross legged at the edge of the cliff, her back was turned to the rest of the chapel, obscuring the source of the gentle scarlet glow emanating from her. She was meditating. 

The student had hardly noticed the priestesses taloned but gentle grip on her arm, leading her down to the stairs like a parent might to a child. The Student flashed a quick smile and vaulted over the railing to cut the trip short. Boy was she cool. She landed with a loud clang as her reinforced feet hit the metal floor. As she looked back up, she saw the priestess staring back with a definite mixture of worry and surprise that faded quickly to annoyance with a pointedly displeased ruffle of wings. 

The stunt had caught the attention of the other residents, as well as the teacher, who had just happened to finish her meditation only moments ago, and was absolutely not interrupting anything because she was worried about her student getting off on the wrong foot with a group of armed strangers. 

Two of the armed strangers in particular were regarding the student as if they were waiting for a mutual friend at a nice cafe, and the seat they were saving was just taken by a grimy young woman with no hair and two solid square feet of rotting flesh. The look her potential new friends were giving her did not sit well with the Student and she was very close to using her hatchet to get off the wrong foot with a group of armed strangers when the Teacher stepped in. 

“Nice to see you awake“ she said, while gripping her students hand extremely tight and twisting her wrist in a subtle message to sit the fuck down before you get killed. 

“Gentlemen and friend, this is my student. She is travelling with me.“

There was a mumble of “well met” from the group. Feeling satisfied that she had communicated her message clearly, the teacher released her grip as a signal to reciprocate. The student responded in kind as she frowned over her mechanical arm, checking it for damage, and allowed her teacher to proceed with introductions even though she totally could have kicked those guys collective asses. 

First was the two potential hatchet targets. A pair of low ranking knights on pilgrimage for some holy order. A newer one than the priestess that tended to the chapel, but in the same general vein. They called themselves Heralds, sent ahead from the rest of their company as scouts, and were thus apparently waiting for two more people who were much more important than they were. Both of them were males with short, stocky builds, cloudy eyes, and wrinkly pinkish skin. They were clearly augmented. The Student recognized middle weight rigs similar to the ones they used on the long-haul land freighters, made for a mix of strength and dexterity with an emphasis on keeping balance in difficult terrain. These two had been fitted with armor, but only lightly. Most of it was around the head, plus a simple cuirass welded over the chest. All of it was adorned with thick white cloth covered in holy scribbles. The student nodded with interest and reverence as they explained that the runes were talismans or something for valor or luck or whatever. One was leaning against a rifle spear with the same white cloth wrapped around the shaft just below the spearhead. The other carried a club covered in barbs and spikes, the same holy cloth simply impaled on the spines. 

The Heralds spoke of their faith at length, with a strange sort of educational bravado that suddenly made much more sense when the student learned they looked down on synthetimancy, considering it a savage practice for uncivilized pagans. However, as they exchanged tales with the Student, a wary sort of geniality crept into their tone. They still maintained a physical distance from the Student, but as their conversation grew to a close, one presented her with a talisman of their god. A blessed lump of something wrapped in white cloth and bound with wire to make the shape of a head and body. An unspoken gesture of good will, and perhaps an apology for a bad first impression.

The final introduction was to the pile of heavy robes with a computer for a head, who at this point had been sitting completely motionless and continued to do so for the entire duration of the conversation. They spoke with a genderless, digitized, voice and explained that they were a sorcerer, a data miner specifically. The student had met only one sorcerer before, also a data miner, and remarked that the sorcerers head must be a newer model than the one she had met before. She joked about how much their head would sell for back home. This seemed to greatly unsettle the sorcerer, and the teachers neck crackled a bit as she turned to glare at her student. 

After many apologies and reassurances that the student had no intention of beheading the sorcerer and selling their severed head for parts, the sorcerer seemed to warm up to the pair. They explained that they had come to Teleth Thadeyn with their mentor as part of an expedition to find the city server vaults, but had unfortunately become separated. This seemed of great interest to the teacher, who perked up at the mention of the cold storage vaults. The two chatted excitedly like a bunch of nerds about things the student didn’t understand, but when it became apparent that the travelers would be headed in opposite directions the enthusiasm died down. Sympathetic, the student invited the sorcerer to travel with them as far as they could. The offer was gladly accepted on the condition that if anyone died, the survivors could sell the leftover heads for a profit. 

And so that was that. They would depart first thing in the morning. As night fell, the rain started up again, and the trio huddled under into one of the re-purposed hab units. The Teacher lay with her back to the door, curving her reverse-jointed legs around the other two. The sorcerer sat on their knees, preparing to enter what they called “repair mode” for the night. The Student rested her head on their lap, the thick robes cushioning the mechanical knees.

As they began to drift off, the sorcerer spoke. They spoke with the same halting computerized tone but it was quieter now and seemed more gentle for it. 

“STATEMENT: I have neglected to ask. QUERY: What brings the two of you to this place? CLARIFICATION: What brings the two of you to Teleth Thadeyn?“

There was a flood of memories for the Student. A wave of loss crashing on the beach of constant activity that had kept her distracted. She was exhausted. She wanted to sleep.

“Nowhere else to go I suppose.“ 

She grabbed a handful of the blanket and turned herself decidedly to face the wall.

There was a beat. No motion was made, but the attention shifted to the Teacher. When she spoke, her tone was distant, an island of conviction floating in a sea of something deep and implacable. 

“Visiting family.“


	6. Husk

Husk

The housing block was one of the relatively newer parts of Teleth Thadeyn, though “newer” didn’t mean much. The entire place was falling apart. Large, square concrete structures supported by frames of carbonsteel. Everything seemed to be piled on top of each other with no real organization. There were staircases and bridges between chunks of housing units that made no real sense. When they ventured further the student saw why. 

It was a pitiful sight. Thin humanoid skeletal structures of the same pallid grey color as the maze of concrete around them. Strips of artificial skin, long rotted but still hanging from places that made less contact with the environment. They moved with a sort of hunched posture, metal skeleton bending under years upon years of strain. Every last one of them clutched a tool of some sort. The oldest ones even seemed to have worn those away, gripping the handle of a useless hunk of metal, swinging it vaguely in the direction of some unknowable project. They watched as about two dozen of the things crowded around a cordoned off area of a bridge, pouring and shaping concrete with a sort of slow, mind-numbing, mechanical, rhythm. 

The student had heard of these things, but as she turned to her teacher for an explanation, all she saw was those bright red eyes staring at the shambling husks with a grimace of disgust and rage that kneecapped the words in her throat. 

“My Student. Do you know what they are?“ 

The Student had only heard stories. She was not a stranger to the horrors and perversions of the world by any means, but staring at these things in person made her stomach churn. She hoped the reality was better than the myth.

“The sick, the old, the hungry, the dead. Cored out like apples and placed in bodies that will never die. The harnesses preserve and piggyback off their brains, using them like an extra CPU, not unlike our sorcerer friend here. Though the technology is primitive compared to them. It was a cheap way to get labor without having to spring for a construction mech. Plus it was a good way to “allow the undesirables to contribute”“

She said this last part with a fresh wave of bile in her voice.

“Are they still…you know? Awake?“

“I’m afraid so. But after all these years there cant be much left. I suspect its why this place is built so strangely. The construction protocols have eroded over the years. There’s no overseer to repair them. They wont die until they age to dust. Every last moment spent working for a foreman that died centuries ago.“

There was a pause. The trio watched as one of the husks returned with a fresh barrow of concrete mix. It reminded the student of home. Of building houses for new families, or repairing the walls after a raid. She spoke up.

“Well, maybe we can speed up the process?“

The teacher had that twinkle in he eye again.


	7. The Scent of Burning Flesh

There is already something deeply and viscerally upsetting about the scent of burnt flesh,

something rotten and sickly sweet, like a morbid parody of the meals we cook for ourselves, as if to say “This? This is you. No better than that pig you fried up to feed yourself, and at least the pig isn’t pretending to be civilized.”

But fire and life go hand-in-hand. As long as there has been flesh, it has burned. Because of this, the oldest most lizardy parts of our brains know the smell, and know what it means. Fire! Flee! Or we will burn! It is something that every last living being is used to, in an evolutionary way. 

The smell of burning techno-organic tissue is not something one gets used to. Combine the deep, genetic, fear, and disgust of burnt flesh, with the stinging, acrid, bleach-like scent of formaldehyde, and burning silane. The fumes eat away at the lungs and throat, stripping away layer after layer of the lining. It only serves to make that rotten sweet scent of proper flesh all the more apparent. It is a truly unignorable scent, any desensitization from untold repetitions of charring horror is immediately stripped away by the causing fumes. It only ever touches the most raw parts of you, and it always hurts. It is something that cannot be acclimated to, it is something that must be removed from your experience of the world.

The Students rebreather took care of it, and because of this, the air here was stale. She wondered if her teacher was having trouble with the air, and remembered she did not actually have a nose. In fact, as she watched the tall grey form from across the pile of burning corpses, she saw that she indeed appeared to be taking breaths, but not from the contractions of a diaphragm like the students. Her entire body would subtly expand and contract in slow rolling waves from her feet to the top of her head. 

She seemed to be transfixed by the pile of burning corpses between them. She had set them alight herself, mumbling something about “making sure”.

The Sorcerer entered the firelight, dragging one of the last of the corpses. They dragged it over in front of the Student, who started the process of salvaging what she could from it. It was a grisly process, half butchery, half engineering. Though these husks were mostly machine at this point. 

She sat over the corpse, cross-legged. For a moment she stared at the things head. It was a fairly faithful recreation of a human head. It was originally supposed to be covered with a layer of artificial skin to give it a more human look, but now it just stared lifelessly into space, the LED’s around its eyes were smashed in. Poor things were probably completely blind. The metal of its skull was covered in dings and scratches from centuries of physical work. Any of the more delicate sensors had been destroyed. 

They lost their resemblance to humans once you got below the eyes. In place of a jaw was a cylindrical mass, not unlike the filter to a gas mask. It was what housed the cortical processor, the computer that kept the husks working. It also served as a speaker that, presumably at one point, allowed the husks to speak. 

The student wondered for a moment which failed first, the speaker or the brain itself? She quickly gathered that this was not a pleasant train of thought to board, and she decided to stop wondering things for a little bit. 

The synthetic skin was mostly long gone. A shame, that was what she was really looking for. With her skills she could at least recycle the old stuff into an emergency graft. She had already made two from what she had salvaged from the others. The skin hung from the metal frame in ragged strips, and frayed at her touch.

She extended the scalpel attachment on her mechanical arm and split open the belly and chest along the saggital plane. Its insides roughly mirrored that of a normal humans. Pumps that recycled the atmosphere into a bioreactor that produced the energy and fluids the husk needed to move in place of the lungs. It was an older, outmoded bacterial culture, and lost homeostasis when the Sorcerer fried the regulator that kept everything balanced. Next to the bioreactor was the small tank of preservatives and anti-bacterials that kept all the proper flesh and blood parts fresh. Sort of an artificial endocrine system. Her mechanical arm was strong enough to rip these parts out, and set them aside for later. These things used copper sulfide as an anti-bacterial agent, and the student wanted as much as she could get. 

Through the center was the series of hydraulic rods that served as the husks spine. They were made of some sort of tungsten alloy. Sturdy as hell, but heavy and slow. Too heavy and slow for any of the students tastes. But clutched among the hydraulics was a silvery braid encased in rubber. Fiber optic wiring. It formed the base of their nervous system. The Sorcerer had specifically requested that the student harvest as much as she could. She carefully removed this with some scalpel cuts and set them aside.

Now came the hard part. 

She took careful aim, and swung the back of her hatchet as hard as she could down onto the space between the husks second and third vertebrae. Her arm hissed as the hydraulic piston into motion. There was a crack, followed by an echoing ringing sound as the hinge of the husks neck shattered. She took the head in her hands and the cortical processor slipped loose with little effort. It was about the size and shape of a soda can, with several wires and tubes connected to it. But what the student wanted was the synaptic tissue. It was ancient, and soaked in preservatives, but she could deal. Synaptic tissue was valuable. Never know when you might contract meningitis. She placed the few strings she could get into the little copper lined vials she kept exactly for this purpose, and turned to the Sorcerer. Who had been watching closely this whole time, and was inadvertently covered in no small amount of gore, though they did not seem to mind. 

The student stood, severed head in one hand, and started to wipe off the Sorcerers head with a rag. 

“This the last one?“

“CONFIRMATION: Yes. I believe so.“

“You got me quite the haul.“ She presented the bundle of fiber-optic wiring. Which was accepted much more quickly than she expected.

“EXCITEMENT: Thank you. All this made me realize that the bottle neck on my relay is the wiring itself. I should be able to increase the cycle rate by almost a full second with these.“

“Sick“ Said the Student, having no idea if that was actually sick or not. 

She tossed the head into the fire. As the preservative-soaked grey matter caught fire. It sparked green.


	8. Where The Sky Used To Be

There used to be a sky here.

In its prime, the housing block was open to the air, built on the edge of the endless nautilus shell of construction that became Teleth Thadeyn. However, it seemed the city denizens never anticipated the explosive rate of growth.

The housing block was huge, larger than any town or settlement the Student had ever seen. She remembered the first time she had ever seen the walls of Isin. The din of the great augurs as the gates parted. Back then it seemed impossible that something of such size and weight could even move, but now these endless blocks of concrete and steel dwarfed the factory-citadels of New Babylon. She could fit all of Isin, foundry and all, into the space this singular housing block occupied. 

It seemed the city had a similar idea. In stark contrast to the featureless concrete was row after row of towering matte black carbonsteel pillars. The supports for the level above, the floor of which formed the great roof, split into colossal tessellating hexagonal sections. To the Student they appeared as the legs of some titanic creature, stamping through a child’s toy, a city made of building blocks. Occasionally, some of them would hum to life with a tremendous noise, a mechanical rumbling and whirring that one could have mistaken for the distant roll and crash of a summer storm. These pillars were what provided light to the enclosed space, their capitals wreathed with massive floodlights that would shudder and falter as the noise came. 

“Freight elevators” said the Teacher, as if no elaboration was necessary. 

The walls that marked the borders of the housing block were made from the same stuff. Evidently a later addition. A guillotine of modern materials, quarantining this place from the rest of the megacity. The housing block strained against those walls. When the light was good, the Student could see legions of laborer husks in the distance, building endless rows of empty concrete structures. Pillars of inaccessible, impossible rooms struggling to expand past a border that could not be breached. Raised highways and boulevards connecting nonsense to nonsense.

Navigating here was difficult. It wasnt maze-like, it was worse. At least mazes made sense. More than once the party had followed a road, only for it to terminate in a sheer wall, or simply the open air. Once a road even proved to be a completely closed loop, leading them right back to where they started. Even more confusingly, it appeared that other travelers had been in the same situation, they would find cairns hanging from a stray piece of rebar, only for the path to lead directly to an impassable wall of rubble. Concerning. 

More concerning was the bodies. 

the Students experience as a trapper, a synthetimancer, and time working as a pit mechanic made her an expert in biomechanichal injuries, simply by the sheer number and variety she had witnessed. When she was working with the pit crew she would joke to the knights, “If its any comfort, no matter how mangled you get I can at least figure out exactly what killed you.” She didn’t have the precision or the bedside manner to be a doctor, but she liked to think she would have made a damn fine detective.

She was disappointed, as it was incredibly obvious what killed these husks. They had been cut in half with a massive axe. She paused for a moment. Cut wasn’t the right word. They were smashed in half. The road here was covered in broad, deep, cuts. Whatever killed these things was strong enough to damage the concrete when it struck. 

She stood from where she was kneeling and turned to relay the information to her companions, when the nearest pillar groaned to life, drowning the words in the rumble of some colossal hidden machinery. She rolled her eyes at the inconvenience, and gesticulated at the Teacher and the Sorcerer, exaggeratedly pantomiming herself swinging an axe, as one would do to split wood. 

The floodlights flickered. A lot of things happened at once. 

There was a comet of scarlet flame. It collided with something above and behind the student, she struggled not to scream as she felt a shower of molten slag hit her shoulders and neck. The ground shook and cracked. The Student was blinded for a moment, and nearly lost her balance. She was shocked into motion, the hydraulics in her legs propelling her into a twisting leap forward, out of the way of whatever her teacher had just struck. 

It was massive. Nearly 30 feet tall. Humanoid in the sense that it had two arms and two legs and a head, but the resemblances stopped there. It was top-heavy, its upper body bristled with uneven lumps of muscle bulging from under its natural armor, as if its skin was a dead, graying sack stuffed so tightly with wads of stolen, rotting, muscle tissue that it was near to bursting. When it moved, the muscles seemed incapable of doing so in harmony, and would only flex in syncopated bursts that caused the entire creature to twitch and shiver as if it was caught in the throes of mad laughter. Over its skin were plates of a dull grey-white material that appeared to be bone, or chitin, or metal, or some unnatural hybrid of all three. Its legs appeared much more machine-like. They bent backwards, the armor on what looked to be its shins forming a double-helix of thick, shock absorbing springs reminiscent of aircraft landing gear that terminated in broad, metallic hooves, stained black with blood and dust. These seemed to compliment the pair of folded, six-blade rotors jutting from its back that seemed to twitch and writhe with the creature itself. One hand still gripped its weapon, where it was embedded in the concrete, just inches from where the Student was standing. The other frantically clawed at its face, trying desperately to keep the molten metal from sealing its own mouth and eyes shut. It was screaming in pain, but the sound was lost under the overwhelming noise of the freight elevator. 

But as the metal began to cool, it bonded with the metal of the things hand, fusing the two together. The Student never got a look at its face. It was a featureless lump. Its jaw was fused open, long drops of metal forming a sort of grill. The only thing it managed to save, between the gap in its fingers, was its right eye. It was huge, deathly milk-white, with a broken sclera, and covered in hundreds of smaller malformed eye-like growths that twitched with the same palsy-like tremors. It reminded the Student of how soap bubbles could form on the edge of other, larger soap bubbles. Every last pupil was fixed on the Teacher with a look of pure, unspeakable hatred.

The freight elevator passed. 

The Student already had the momentum, she was preparing to run. The Teacher was doing nothing of the sort. As the thing began to slough its enormous form towards the Teacher, hate burning in its eyes, her hands were already ablaze with scarlet flame. The thing roared in fury as it began to gain speed, lifting its weapon for another strike. The Student looked away to shield her eyes from the flash of light. But as she did, she heard her teacher scream at the thing. And when she did, her voice matched the rage of the thing, but there was something else in it, that same deep, unplaceable emotion. 

“Traitor!“


	9. The Shaft

The elevator shaft was massive,

so large that even with the ample light the Sorcerer provided, The Student could not see the walls, the platform they had descended from, or the platform they were supposedly descending to. She could hardly see the steel cable she was clinging to. Here she hung, wrapped around a single steel cable, nothing but darkness in all directions. 

She felt claustrophobic, and alone, and she hated it. Her rational brain knew that there was ample space here, that she could hear the clanking of the Sorcerers mechanical hands below her and the deft motions of her Teacher above her, yet she could not shake the feeling that she was being enclosed upon. There was something oppressive about the darkness here. All she could do was continue to climb lower and lower into the abyss. She could feel panic welling up in her chest. Her HUD flashed a symbol to alert her to her increased heart rate. She didn’t need it, she could feel it whirring faster in her chest. So she did the thing she always did to relieve the tension. She talked.

“So. Sorcerer. Whats your story?“

Their mechanical voice echoed a bit in the emptiness of the shaft, it helped the Student feel a bit less boxed in. 

“PUZZLED. My story?“

She was strong, but her voice strained a bit with the effort of the climb.

“Yeah, you know, your story. Why’d you become a sorcerer?“

There was a pause. If one strained, they could hear the sound of cooling fans whirring.

“STATEMENT. It was an escape. I was born to the harem caste of house Thraace. I had always been interested in sorcery, and would practice whenever I had spare time. The court Admin would visit our branch on occasion, they even offered to tutor me if I could show enough skill. Maybe even take me as an apprentice.“

“You must have had some real talent to be able to graduate out.“

“STATEMENT. I did not.“

“No? Then what are you doing here?“

“STATEMENT. I was exiled.”

“Hang on. Exiled? For what?“

“STATEMENT: One of the nobles that owned me took particular interest in replacing parts of my body.“

There was a shuddering noise as their cooling fans strained against their motors.

“STATEMENT: I fried his brain like an egg.“

“Wow…Okay.” 

The Student pondered the image conjured by choice of words for a moment. A question surfaced. 

“I’m surprised they only exiled you.“

“STATEMENT: He was not well liked. PARAPHRASE: But rules were rules.“

The sound of fans started to die down.

“STATEMENT: If they wanted my body they can have it. This one is all mine. I prefer metal and wires to flesh. Easier to replace.“

The Student could have objected to that last bit, but decided against it.

Time passed in the dark.

“Are we nearly to the bottom?“ asked the Student, as she glanced up to look at her Teacher. She was startled when she did. The Teacher was much closer than she thought, and in an odd position. When she looked up she saw those red eyes staring down at her. Her teacher was climbing upside down, face-first, gripping the cable with her hands and articulated feet. Her coat hung around her in an odd fashion that gave her an even more alien look. Like a spider, about to drop down upon unsuspecting prey. She spoke in a hushed whisper.

“Quiet. We are being watched.“


	10. Apocalypse Gourmet

When she saw the housing block above them, it was indestructible.

Kilometers of concrete and steel, waves of endless expansion crashing against the titanic carbonsteel walls. It might as well have been water lapping at the sides of a metal bucket. 

But those were just the walls.

After descending so long in the dark, the student realized why the elevators werent running anymore. The immeasureable weight of so many structures had shattered through the floor of the housing block, and poured into the section below. It was dark, but by the meager light of her flame she could see the heap around her. Overturned, broken homes, plumbing bent out of shape and repaired by a malfunctioning husk into a useless jungle of rivets and tubes, small shimmering pools of oil had forming where valves had burst and let to drip for unknown periods of time. Tiny recyclers crouched at the edges of the pools, fuel filters extended to scavenge what they could. They scattered into the dark when the student moved closer. 

The bottom of the shaft was a floor of pounded rubble and dust. Under their feet was the old elevator car, flattened against the ground like a birdcage that picked a fight with a tank. It formed part of the floor. The doors to the shaft were bent open at the bottom into a little triangular opening. A bundle of carins hung from the doorway above, jangling in the wind. They were on the right path, but everyone was rightfully exhausted. 

The Student was starving, but this could be remedied. She asked her companions if they too were hungry, a moment passed in silence as she realized that she was the only one of the party that actually needed to eat to survive. 

“Fine.“ She thought. “Well then you cant have any.“ 

She searched the floor of the shaft to see what she had to work with. Inventory amounted to: A single, tiny stream of clean water coming from a pipe in the wall. Some concrete, old metal pipes, large pools of motor oil, some recyclers, some stalky white kind of necrovegetation, and some normal but highly toxic kind of orange moss.

It was a buffet. She could see why the pathfinders who found this place had made camp here. 

She started with what was ostensibly the hard part. One of the oil pools had a little wick of flame near it, just enough to see the edge of the pool. The student knew she only had to wait, so she got down on one knee and watched the light dance. After only a few minutes a recycler crawled out from the dark to feed at the shimmering puddle. It was slightly larger than the ones she saw before, maybe 20cm long without the tail, black, tough leathery skin covered in little whirls that resembled a fingerprint. The Student watched it extend the nozzle on its head and start to drink. The flesh on its back rippled as it cycled the fuel into its tank, experimentally flexing the muscles its piston chambers with an almost inaudible rumble as its engine fired. 

The Student extended her arm, and concentrated for a moment. It was something she had done before hundreds if not thousands of times. Producing keratin and collagen, producing one in dense, flat layers for rigidity, the other in long, strong coils for flexile strength. A little hook of bone to prepare everything and keep it in place, and a temporary muscle for control. She opened a tiny hole in her flesh on the back of her arm just below her wrist, and took aim, holding everything in place until…

Thwip.

There was a sound like a tiny squeak mixed with the cough of a tiny motor, as if something just had both its heart and its tiny combustion engine pierced by a barbed projectile made of what was basically fingernails. The Student vaulted her hiding space and flexed her arm as she returned it to normal. It wasnt the cleanest hit but it did the job. She removed the dart from its body and pressed it back into her arm, where it reabsorbed after a few moments and hung the now dead recycler from one of the hooks on her belt. 

Next was the toxic fungus. It seemed to grow in little nodules that eventually became bulbous stalks. She picked one off and took a bite. It tasted meaty and a bit astringent, slightly chewy on the inside with a crisp texture to the skin, it tingled delightfully on its way down the unsuspecting neurotoxins in the fungus wandered into the wrong neighborhood that was her digestive system. There were few things on the planet that were actually toxic to her strain. Generations of living in the Glowing Swamps had turned the enzyme cultures in her strains body into the biological equivalent of an elite special operations assault team. The fungus didnt stand a chance. She grabbed several handfulls of it, wrapped it all into a cloth, and stuck it on her belt. 

Next she found a section of pipe that looked useful. She found a good looking one, shaped like a U, about half as tall as she was. With a flick of her arm she snapped open the welding torch on her mechanichal arm and got to slicing through the metal. Two diagonal cuts at the “feet” to pry it from the wall, along with a horizontal one at the top to form a sort of trough. With a foot planted firmly against the wall she ripped the thing off, slung it over her shoulder, and headed back to camp.

She returned to find her teacher sitting cross-legged in meditation again, doing that odd rippling breathing thing, and the Sorcerer sitting nearby, holding their own head in their left hand, while performing repairs on the wires that made up their spine with their right. Normal stuff.

With a grunt of effort, student thrust the staple of metal into the ground before them as if to say “check this shit out”. She was met with a beep of protest from the sorcerer for starling them and the Teacher completely ignoring her aside from opening only one eye. 

A dramatic flourish of her mechanical arm. Out came the scalpel. Butchering the recycler was nearly automatic work by this point. Draining the fuel intake and washing out the piston chambers, cutting the ligaments to the pistons and setting them aside for the stockpot, cracking the driveshaft and emptying the marrow onto the griddle, out came the heart, the lungs, the liver, the best cuts were along the roll cage and the fuel tank, those were stripped and filleted. Everything edible was tossed onto the griddle. Another dramatic flourish, the scalpel was gone. The other two were watching intently now. The keratin dart from before reappeared from her arm, but this time in the form of a pair of chopsticks, which she took with her mechanical arm. The other hovered beneath the grill, and produced several low, blue flames, one at each fingertip, and a sixth at the palm. The meat began to sizzle to life. Light applause from the audience. After a few minutes of cooking, the bundle of fungi was undone, and tossed on the griddle to cook, marinating in the juice from the meat. It actually managed to smell good. The meat was turned, the vegetables were tossed, and with a final dramatic flourish. The flame went out. Proper applause from the audience.

She bowed, and sat to eat. 

“I would offer you some, but I dont have an internal breeder reactor or the ability to filter-feed or whatever it is you do, so the two of you will have to suffer without my cooking.“

They laughed. The Student was reminded of how hungry she was, and as she sat to eat, the Sorcerer went into low power mode to recharge, and the Teacher slipped back into her filter-feeding or whatever it was. There was something a bit different in the air tonight, something a little warmer. 

Later, the Student would realize that, in their own way, this was the first time the three of them had shared a meal together.


	11. The Broken Bones

This place had no name, but it reminded the Student of the injuries she saw as a pit mechanic.

Some of knights would seek a blessing before battle, one that sent cell regeneration into overdrive. While under the effects they were nearly impossible to kill, but sometimes the blessing was almost too powerful. Wounds would seal shut like a zipper being pulled too fast, leaving the skin with a grainy, knotted, texture almost like driftwood. Bones would be shattered out of place, barely hanging on by skin and gristle, only to heal in place a moment later, jutting off at a right angle to the rest of the mangled limb. Gruesome, but alive. 

That’s what she decided to call this place. The Broken Bones. It was a city bashed out of place, as if dropped from a great height upon a city that befell the same fate. It was that, over and over and over again. It was a dark, labyrinthine system of tunnels made from familiar shapes. Streetlamps jutted upside-down from the ceiling, melding into the floor, apparently acting as a form of support for the tunnels. Windows appeared with no real rhyme or reason, sometimes open, sometimes locked closed, sometimes giving a glimpse of an adjacent tunnel, sometimes only looking onto a bare stone wall. Plumbing seemed to weave its way through the entire affair with no concern for the rest of the structures and tunnels, moving something from above to below like a great system of roots. In fact, it seemed to incorporate itself into the natural structure of the tunnels of rubble. A pipe would open to the air at the top of a slope, spilling a stream of oil that would roll down the rocks, seeping into the cracks, only to reappear later at the bottom of the slope, collecting into a trough that spirited it off to some other unknown place. 

There were doors too. Simple hinged affairs, occasionally some would be made of a thicker metal with a pneumatic device for automatically opening or closing, though the student doubted they still had power. Some hung open, some seemed to be locked closed, some were even blocked off with metal struts or large rocks. It was the first sign they weren’t alone. 

There were other things down here, though the student couldn’t tell what or how many or how big or how dangerous they were. Teleth Thadeyn was already so full of weird shit, her instincts were shot, she didn’t know what to expect, which meant she had to expect the worst. 

Down they ventured. This place had to be as tall as the housing block above. The deeper they got, the more oil there was. Pouring from the ceilings in thick streams, collecting in larger and larger pools, there was even the sound of a river, though none of them could see it. The air got thicker and thicker with the stuff as they ventured deeper. The Teacher looked visibly uncomfortable. There was plenty of room for her to walk upright, but she padded along on all fours. Her eyes had no pupils, but the student could tell she was scanning the area. The Student couldn’t tell how the Sorcerer was feeling, as they had no visible means of expressing emotion. The Teacher padded closer, and spoke in a whisper.

“Do you feel that?”

“No, what?“ 

“Eyes.“

“Im sure its just recyclers. Ive seen a ton of them down here.“

“Maybe. Maybe. But, My Student, do you really think its just recyclers?” 

She did not, in fact, think it was just recyclers. It became apparent that they were going to learn what exactly It was very shortly.

The Teacher continued.

“My Student, I cannot call fire here. The air is flammable. We would roast alive.“

Hatchet it was then. The Student slowly undid the clasp. As she did so, there was a sound of cooling fans as the Sorcerer readied their relay staff. They understood, they were ready.

All sound seemed to die away. 

There was a chattering, hissing, scream. 

Things sprang from crevices in the dark. The first thing The Student saw was the eyes. Huge and orange, glowing with a pale light that illuminated their flat, scaly faces and jaws of needle-like teeth. Even in the dark of the tunnel she caught flashes of thick, scaly flesh, and fingers tipped with vicious claws. They were humanoid, moving on all fours, but not running. Their movement was a fluid series of leaps, bounding off the floor and walls of the tunnels and even each other with admirable grace and worrying speed. As they approached, they began to fan out. A spark of panic ran through the Students mind. Those were pack hunting tactics, which meant…

She whipped around to look for the things that would come at her from behind, and saw several more sprinting towards her. She still had time before they overwhelmed the group, she had to-

Whump.

There was another hissing scream as one of the things landed directly on top of her. Her reinforced skeleton absorbed much of the shock, but the thing managed to sink its teeth into her left arm. It hurt like hell, but luckily its jaws werent strong enough to crush bone. The Student could feel it injecting venom into her bloodstream. A fast-acting paralytic. A spicy taste filled her mouth as her endocrine system proceeded to rip the toxin limb from limb. That must be how these things hunt, ambush until every threat is paralyzed, then move in for the kill when they’re helpless. Cowards. 

She gritted her teeth through the pain and wrenched her body around to free her other arm. The Student noticed with no small amount of satisfaction that the thing was evidently surprised that its prey was still able to move. She imagined how much more surprised it would have been had she not proceeded to fire the piston on her mechanical arm and punch right through its stupid gecko-man-thing skull. 

The gecko-man-thing crumpled to the ground, losing some teeth in the Students forearm in the process. She grabbed her hatched and scrambled to her feet. The Sorcerer seemed to be fairing the best of them. They were standing motionless with both hands on their relay staff held out before them. They had apparently done something to the things minds, one was twitching, seizing on the ground, and blinking unconctrollably while the others were ripping it to bloody ribbons. The whine of the cooling fans had reached a shuddering fever pitch with the strain of the spell, but it seemed to be working. 

The teacher was in trouble. She was lifting one of the things up by its neck, it was flailing in panic as the Teacher crushed its neck. She was reduced to a knee as she let the dead thing fall. There was one hanging off her shoulder, one at her ribs, and another at her calf. She was bleeding, purple stains growing from where the things had bitten and continued to hold on. 

The Student did the same thing she did to the thing that attacked her. A quick hatchet to the cranium and the things would crumple and die. She moved quickly. She had bandages to staunch the bleeding but her Teachers biology was totally alien, she had no idea how the venom was even effecting her, much less what to do about it. The teacher slumped against the wall of the cave. Her eyes were closer to a pink than their normal red, which couldn’t be a good sign. When she spoke there was an odd croak to her voice. 

“My student, are you hurt?“ 

“Im fine miss. I’m more worried about you.“

“Good, good. Was that the last of them?“

“I think so Miss.“

“Very good.“

The Teacher leaned forwards and vomited some sort of clear bile onto the floor. It hissed as it made contact, and started to burn a hole in the floor. After a moment, she noticed the look of panic on the Student’s face.

“Don’t worry don’t worry, that’s just my body is evacuating the toxins. This venom won’t kill me but gods it hurts, and I just don’t have the blood plasma to deal with it right now. If its all the same to you my Student, I’d like to fall unconscious for a while.“

“Are you sure you’re not going to die on me?“

Another stream of clear vomit, followed by a slightly relieved sigh. Her eyes were growing more red.

“Positive.“

“Well…Alright..You rest Miss, the Sorcerer and I will keep watch.“

With a nod, she slipped into merciful unconsciousness. Her limp body falling into that odd rolling breathing. It was almost hypnotic to watch. The Student leaned against the cave wall next to her, bracing the Teachers head against her shoulder. It was easier now that she knew the teacher wasn’t awake for the pain. She was exhausted. She hardly noticed as the sorcerer joined them, sitting on her other side, the gentle familiar whirring of their fans beckoned the Student to sleep.

But then, from the further darkness of the cavern, there came a terrible sound. That same hissing, chattering, cry, but also something else. Something deeper. Distant, and growing closer.


	12. The Weeping Demon

What do you do if you wake up and see a demon staring down at you?

An odd first thought given the circumstances, but the Students instincts were firing all at once, every neuron was screaming for her to move, to distract the nightmarish thing long enough for her to escape, and her muscles simply weren’t responding. Rational thought rarely makes an appearance in situations like this. Rational thought usually runs screaming into the subconscious in situations like this, leaving all those monkey brain instincts to do the simple but necessary work of trying really hard not to die. 

But the Student was on empty, everything she needed to move wouldn’t move, and all she could do was stare back into the hexagon of shivering pasty eyes and hope her body softened the blow for her companions. 

Where the demon they had encountered before was all heavy metal and bulky muscle, this one was all wire and sinew. Long, straight, hind legs decked in that same metallic chitin armor, terminating in what looked more like hands than feet. It stood on its toes, ready to move at any moment. These were absent on its front legs, that simply terminated in long flat bone structures that, based on its current stance, it appeared to use as vaults for leaping. Its spine breached its rotting, stolen skin, covering its back in a layer of natural armor, and kept going past its lower back to form a sort of long makeshift tail that thing the thing whipped lazily back and forth to keep balance.

Its head was covered with a second skull of chitin armor, whose shape seemed to be a blend of several long-extinct animals, but unmistakable even to the post-human mind. It was the long, pointed, muzzle of a predator. The natural and necessary shape of any being that spends its days ripping flesh out of other, less fortunate beings. But there was something else about it that the student couldn’t place.

Something hit her face. Not something hard and sharp and painful like she was expecting, but something small and soft and wet and slightly greasy. Then it happened again. And then again. And then it kept happening.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip. 

It took a long moment for the students exhausted brain to corral enough neurons to realize what was happening. The demon was crying. 

It was at this point where rational thought ran out of energy too. The Student shifted her face slightly to keep the tears from falling in her eyes. There was a blur of movement as the demon reacted to the tiny motion. It was incredibly fast, even the motion sensors in the Students implants lost it for a moment. And it was quiet. The acoustic sensors never even picked it up. 

It rose up on it hind legs, and the Student realized that the long bone structures jutting from its wrists were actually massive necrobiological blades, barbed on either edge, coming to a chisel point where they contacted the earth. The student’s blood ran cold. It was terrifying. The last sight of so many unlucky explorers.

The effect was negated, but only somewhat, when it sat on its haunches, and began to scrape its blades together to sharpen them in an apparent act of self-care. Normally, sharpening a blade at someone would be an excellent intimidation tactic, but at the moment, the Student thought it looked more like someone nervously wringing their hands together, or a cat licking itself. There was just something vulnerable about the action, something about its posture that gave her the sense that it was soothing for the demon. That it was trying to comfort itself. 

She watched for a long while, never daring to blink. The only noise was the scraping of bone on bone, and soft, shuddering weeping. 

Eventually, after what seemed like hours but could have been minutes, the weeping stopped. And the silence was broken by a voice. 

“Is she going to die?“

At first, the student did not realize where the voice came from, as the demon’s lips did not move. Its voice was smooth and deep, but an uncanny kind of deep that came with having vocal chords far too large for a human mouth. This caused it to speak with a drooping intonation that sent a wave of flight-or-fight through the students mind. It was the sort of thing that made very clear that this was not a human speaking. This was something pretending to be a human speaking. 

The thing had to be talking about her Teacher.

“She is very injured, but she will survive.“

The demon was quiet. The student noticed the scraping noise slowed a bit. 

“I should kill all of you.“ said the demon, as if it were’t talking to anyone in specific, and was just testing how the concept sounded out loud. 

“Why haven’t you?“ 

There was another long silence. The scraping seemed to grow faster again.

“After everything mother has done, I should hate her. And I do hate her. I hate her so much.“

The Student could feel her face go white as its voice built and built, never raising in volume, but losing coherence, threatening to devolve into a shuddering growl. Its head began to twitch and spasm, and through all of this the Student saw how it had been speaking without moving its jaws. On the underside of its head, was a second, disturbingly human-looking mouth. But as it approached the crescendo of its rage, the shuddering, labored, breathing seemed to take over.

It was crying again.

“But I can’t bring myself to hate her enough.“

In a single motion far too quiet and graceful for something of its size and construction, it was on all fours again. 

“I will patrol the tunnels until she wakes. Leave as soon as possible. You will not see me again.“

And just like that, it was gone.


	13. Lower the World Spills

Lower, lower and lower the world spilled.

Running into cracks in the earth like the same burning rain it sheltered itself from. No matter how impenetrable, how tight the lid, it always seems to seep through. Pushing with the weight of eons onto the slightest crack. 

The Waterways bore the weight of everything above it. This was a place built to carry that endless deluge of filth and rain as it filtered its way through everything above it. To catch it all in cisterns and aqueducts and shepherd it all away to somewhere else. Somewhere the people above wouldn’t have to worry. 

There was no open space here. Even compared to the Broken Bones. It was all rail-thin concrete walkways flanking overflowing rivers of burning, foul smelling, iridescent muck. This was not a place built for living things. Everything about the construction of the Waterways made it clear that this was a place for unwanted things, for trash. And if you were here, you must be trash too. 

In the cities heyday, maintaining the waterways was too dangerous for skilled workers, but too important for unskilled prison laborers. Periodic flash-floods from by the rainstorms above would fill the tunnels with a bone-crushing torrent of toxic water. Those who never learned the layout of the tunnels were doomed to be washed away. Then there were the things in the water. Hungry lightness things that lived and breathed the filth and watched from below the surface. Tales of toxic sirens luring exhausted minds to a murky doom, or scaled beasts with jaws like a vice that would swallow you whole, or even stranger things. 

Because the Waterways marked the border. The border between the places above, where people lived and worked and farmed, and the places below.

The abandoned sectors, the old cities, the empty shafts, the mines and quarantine sectors and ancient vaults locked from the inside. The bunkers and safehouses where the old world tried to hide from the rain. Safe places that turned to tombs when the generators died. Every place that was sealed out of fear or necessity and simply forgotten about, treated as the new ground level for the next big construction project. The hole in the earth into which all the sins and mistakes of the world were cast, and left to fester. 

The Deep Places.

The Waterways were the borderlands. And to the New Gods, they were the answer. The answer to the mistakes of the past. There was something in the basement, so they turned on the faucet. Fill it all with toxic mire, drown it all out.

But the faucet had been running a long, long, long time. And still the shaft divers returned covered in strange symbols, or claw marks, or the blood of something ungraced by the sun, baring incomprehensible messages about impossible things that grow in the dark. It seems even the New Gods didn’t understand how deep the rabbit hole goes. 

The things in the deep rarely tried to climb the great shafts, but the Waterways, the Waterways were built over the old-world sewer systems. The veteran shaft divers said if you were fast and lucky enough, there were safe spots from the flash floods. That if you knew the way, you could ford the torrents of burning filth and reach the city proper. 

But that was then, and this is now. In the past the Waterways may have been that no-mans-land between the dominion of the New Gods and the forgotten deep things, but things had changed. 

The Waterways belonged to the recyclers now. 

Every nook and cranny was teeming with them. Every make and model, gorged and fat off the constantly flow of garbage from above. Huge, writhing piles of nestmates constantly biting and repairing each other. Packed lines at the edges of the murky rivers with feeding tubes extended, slipping on the unsteady edges and toppling into the mire when another thirsty mouth tried to take their place. The constant squeaking throats and roaring engines of territorial squabbles. 

Even as they tried to scatter in the dim light that the travelers carried, there was no space, no square inch of land for them to move. But still they tried. They had learned that light meant danger and so they fled. Spilling over each other, knocking the smaller ones into the torrent. 

Then there were the spawning pools. 

The sources of the swarms. You heard them before you saw them, the roar of the womb-fabricators matched only by the constant chattering wail of the children the produced. The travelers learned to avoid the noise of the breeder recyclers, drawing too close to the nests would cause them to swarm. 

In fact, the travelers learned to avoid killing the little things as much as they could. Creating a corpse would cause the throng to fall on it, cannibalizing the fallen for parts. 

The Sorcerer was uneasy. They weren’t supposed to act like this. The recyclers were synthetic, built on the base of some long-extinct animal they had immediately out-competed. Even with the constant source of food, the nests were just too dense. By their estimate, the colonies were losing over half their nest to the rivers. Yet still they fed, and spawned, and scavenged. Something was keeping them like this. But what could possibly hold dominion over all of this?


	14. Gullet

These tunnels were the gullet of the world, and the world was choking.

It is impossible to conceive the sheer scale of the waste produced by Teleth Thadeyn. It was as if every step into the waterways only increased the amount of filth. Writhing squealing masses of recyclers grinding away at mounds of shed parts and discarded labels in ancient unreadable languages, desperately trying to consume these blockages in the arteries of the world, only to have another torrent of water with another ton of garbage to fill the gap. Eventually the walls, the floor, the ceilings, every surface of old worn concrete was replaced by a washed-out technicolor of hardened garbage. Deeper the travelers walked. The tunnels widened as they were joined by others, the bottom of a ‘Y’ that formed over and over again. 

Cramped service corridors became hallways, and then alleys, then train tunnels, then great vaulted halls large enough to fit a stadium inside. All arranged in an angular corkscrew that twisted itself deeper and deeper into the earth, the gentle slope of the floor carrying ever more filth into the mouths to this vile, festering delta. 

The roofs of the biggest rooms were connected to the rest of the sewer network by holes in the ceilings, through which huge meteors of garbage would periodically fall. As these became more common, beneath the holes there began to form huge stalagmites of hardened garbage that broke and churned the current beneath them. The sound of the waters became louder and louder the deeper they ventured, the anemic trickle of the rivers becoming a babble, then a chatter, then a mad roar as the current smashed against the festering teeth of the larger cisterns. 

The mad ranting of the current drowned out any attempt at conversation, and so The Student watched the water. Even the sickly pallid orange of the rain was eventually diluted into a deep, oil-slick, iridescent black. She gazed at it with a mixture of awe and horror. Her body could handle poisons sure, but this was something wholly different. This was death. 

There were bodies in the surf. Twitching masses of recyclers fought for air as they scrambled upwards, frantically clawing at the makeshift raft made of nestmates that weren’t fast enough. There were husks, poor things that lost their footing above, huge metallic bodies of construction mechs, and things she couldn’t recognize. All drifting deeper and deeper.

The Student couldn’t help but feel as if the world was swallowing her, as if she was weaving her way down the throat of some titanic sleeping beast. The stalactites of garbage grew thicker and thicker, as if the mouth was closing around her. Swallowing her. The stalactites became pillars, clogging the holes in the ceilings, continuing their slow motion downward like the product a colossal, vile meat grinder. It gave the deeper cisterns the appearance of an ancient temple. Profane colonnades forming the house of a discarded, disgusting god. 

It all came to the great cistern. It was huge. The amount of open space rivaled the upper housing blocks. The sheer force of the torrent was blunted here, fanning out until the water was less than an inch thick, with no more force than a puddle of spilled milk. It was nearly flat. The gentle slope of the floor swirling the masses of filth into gentle downward spiral, all focused on the center. Hillocks of garbage formed, some nearly two stories high, in graceful trailing spirals around the nexus of the current. From above, it would have resembled a small, filthy, galaxy. 

The roar of the current was gone, reduced to an almost inaudible trickle. But it had been replaced by a new sound.

It was a recycler. That was the closest the Student could get. It was a recycler in the sense that a gecko was a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It was unthinkable that something of its sheer size could even move. Just on all sixes, it was nearly four stories high and maybe four times that in length. The student watched as it reared up on its four hind legs, and opened its mouth. Even at this distance, the sheer sound of the grinders was ear-splitting. Just the sound seemed to shake the entire structure. Slowly it worked. Titanic footfall after titanic footfall, pushing, fitting its colossal mouth around the mountain of garbage, grinding grinding grinding the waste into…what?

The Students mind was racing. It should have been outputting raw materials. Separating out anything useful into little 16oz cubes of industry-standard alloys. 

But when the massive recycler finished its mouthful, it slowly turned to the next pile, which happened to put the three travelers directly into its line of sight. It reared up again, and gave another ear-splitting bellow. The sound reverberated off the walls of the great cistern, echoing again and again in dreadful harmony with itself. It was a sound like the foghorn of a battleship, a truly unstoppable noise that cut through all manor of rational thought. 

The Student saw it head on, and understood. There was an orange glow coming from its stomach. Something had blown a hole in its belly, exposing the distilling furnace. A constant flow of molten slag dripped from the wound. Everything this monster ate, every last mouthful, it all spilled out in a fine, superheated mist. 

No matter how much it ate, nothing would ever satisfy it. It was trapped in the gullet of the world with all the food it could ever eat, and it was starving. 

It slammed its colossal forebody down on the ground, and began to charge towards the travelers on all six of its legs. It was huge, and slow, and far away, but picking up momentum alarmingly quick.

They ran.


	15. The World On Springs

The world is held up by springs.

Impossible coils of metal spiraling down into the earth, anchored to the bedrock of the world by rivets so large it seems that no pile driver could ever be large enough to pound their titanic weight into the impenetrable grey stone, pressed against the places above, balancing the cities and factories as a waiter would balance a plate on deft fingers. And slowly the world listed. A dance in geological time. The creaking megatons of steel lent its voice to the sub-sonic dirge as it bore the weight of the casket above. 

This was the space between the walls. A bare stone floor that stretched on for miles, intended to be host only to dust and strain. The leaking crawl space of Teleth Thadeyn, if a crawl space was big enough to have its own weather system. 

It was teeming with life.

The first thing the travelers noticed was the rain. Not the burning amber rain of the surface. Real, true rain. It condensed on the surface of the massive ceiling, and seemed to fall constantly. In fact, water seemed to cling to every surface here.

The tons upon tons of garbage from the cities above seemed to collect here, smashed and ground a thousand times over into a black, reeking mire. The ground was soft, and wet, bootprints leaving small puddles of water. Pale, gnarled, arboroids spread their roots and slowly pulled themselves across the ground, their caps providing small, but serviceable shelter to the travelers provided they moved slowly enough. 

As the they ventured deeper and deeper into the swamps the began to find small bridges over the deeper pools of water. Crude, but clever affairs made from necrvegetation and metal bars. Cairns hung from the slats that formed the floors. This was the path. 

In fact, they began to find small abandoned shelters. Simple structures made from salvaged metal and some unknown hide that functioned to keep the rain off. A warm, dry place was welcome. Eventually the trio came across one large enough for the three of them, and they decided to rest. 

The Student felt at home.


	16. Again

“Again.”

There was an explosion. The fog seemed to cling to her lungs, weighing down her breathing until every inhalation was a chore. It based itself along the glass of her rebreather, turning her vision into even more of a haze than it already was. It smothered her clothes, meeting with the sweat of exertion to make every inch of fabric lay over her exhausted body like a lead curtain. 

“Again.”

She thrust out her arm again. It was covered in holes ringed with black, charred flesh. The fog seeped into those too. There was a low whistling sound, and a patch of fog before her started to shimmer with an iridescent film. Her hands trembled as she pressed together two fingers, and snapped. 

BOOM

It was a wonderful explosion. Tightly packed, highly flammable, properly contained. But it was the wrong color. It was orange, with the barest little flecks of red were visible at the explosions heart. 

“Still not hot enough.” Thought the student, struggling to keep her balance. 

For just a moment, the flames blew back the fog, she got a glimpse of her Teacher standing opposite her on the little spit of land, observing her progress with those huge, impenetrable, lidless eyes. A moment later, the fog came flowing back, desperately rushing towards the patch of warm air like a school of smoky piranhas. The air was even thicker with fog. 

“Again.”

Methane, Butane, Propane. It was all just Carbon and Hydrogen. She could work with carbon and hydrogen. She had carbon and hydrogen out the ass. Carbon and hydrogen made sense. Just get some carbon, stick as much hydrogen onto it as possible, add pressure and a pilot light you’ve got a nice aerosol that only blows up when you want it to. That’s what the snap was for. She reorganized her cellular structure to coat one finger in iron, and the other in silicon dioxide. Smack ‘em together and you’ve got sparks. Easy peasy, she thought. Its just flint and steel. Literally as easy as banging two rocks together.

Again, she extended her arm and continued to rant to herself mentally. 

BOOM

Nothing.

But no, she had gotten a wild hair up her ass and wanted this gangly grey bitch to teach her how to work with fucking Lithium. 

“Again.“ Repeated said Gangly Grey Bitch.

“Fucking lithium.” She mumbled, forcing her cells to collect more and more carbon and hydrogen. Her arm burned with the exertion, she was putting her cells into overdrive with all this practice. Lithium had a burning point of 2426 degrees Kelvin. Methane had a burning point of only 15.15 degrees Kelvin. She would have to create the explosion in layers. Starting with a core of methane, then stepping up to propane, then butane, then octane, then nonane. Like a jawbreaker, but a bomb. 

It took an enormous amount of energy just to pack all this carbon and hydrogen into a small space and aerosolize it. Not even counting the amount of energy she had to sacrifice just to keep the fucking Lithium from exploding inside her goddamn arm. Lithium was reactive to both oxygen and water, chemicals that so foolishly made up 80% of her biology. 

She extended her arm.

BOOM

Still nothing.

“Again.“

“Fucking Lithium” She grumbled, glaring at the holes in her arm out of which carelessly handled pockets of that cursed element had so mockingly blown chunks. 

She thought of her Teacher, who was doubtless still observing her from across the little island, and her violet, lithium-based blood. The Student glared harder at the pits in her arm, as if they were somehow at fault for the natural reactivity of the element Lithium. She extended her arm.

BOOM

Nothing.

“Again.“

“Why would anyone ever put this shit into their bodies.” She stormed, “It explodes so fucking easily.” 

And suddenly, like the joint of a wasteland marauders arm being ripped from its socket, it clicked. Her mind spun into action, and a moment later, her body followed. 

Away went the long and metabolically expensive hydrocarbon chains. What she needed was a propellant. Something cheap and flammable to fill space. She needed propane, and a lot of methyl radical. She took a deep slow breath, and concentrated. The pain and exhaustion was being temporarily held back by the electric buzz of excitement that ran through her body.

Through a gap in the fog she saw her Teacher. She was making the face again. That gleeful, but slightly creepy lipless grin she did when she was excited. Her Teacher knew she was on the verge of success.

Again, she extended her arm. A deep breath. A snap.

KA-BOOM

It was like a flower, a petaled fractal of rich, brilliant, scarlet. A massive, blindingly bright explosion that vaporized the space in front of her. It was hotter than anything she had ever produced, if she had eyebrows, they would have been burned off. It catapulted her backwards off the tiny island, landing her back-first into the muggy water. The explosion had dug, no melted a pit into the ground, heating the earth into white-hot slag that still bubbled and churned as the Student scrambled from the muck, eager to survey her handiwork. 

The image of the explosion was burned figuratively into her mind, and literally into her retinas, but it didn’t matter. She had done it.

“Fuck yeah!” She screamed, stumbling drunkenly back onto the shores of the island. 

“2426 degrees of BULLSHIT.” She waved a triumphant finger in the general direction of her Teacher as her brain struggled to figure out why the entire swamp was spinning. 

“How do you like THAT you gangly grey bitch? I’m sorry that was mean.”

By way of exhausted apology, she promptly collapsed face first into the mud.


	17. Reunion

The tunnel of rotting flesh was surprisingly comfortable,

though The Students expectations for the comfort of tunnels made from preserved rotting flesh were fairly low. As it turns out, layered recycled flesh had the consistency of firm rubber. The Sorcerer trailed a hand on the wall of the cavern as they walked, occasionally scraping an errant fingernail against the pliable seams. The Student watched as the material would flower open, and after a moment, zipper itself back together. This was concerning. This meant that something was keeping all this flesh in order, imposing its own biological will on the tunnel they now passed through.

The passage sloped gently downwards. The sound of the rain died away. It was a small thing, but the student was almost immediately aware of its absence. Even a small reminder of home did a lot to ease the tension in the air. The Teacher was nervous, everyone could feel it.

The passage opened into a new, but familiar open space. They were inside another freight shaft, one of the huge modern ones. Evidently this was was no longer functioning, as the floor was covered in the same dead flesh as the corridor was. There was an exit on the opposite wall, but directly in the path between them, was a large pit. The Student had no way of knowing how far up or down the shaft stretched.

“Wait here.” Whispered the Teacher.

She took several steps away from the party. Took a deep breath, and shouted:

“Sister! I’m home! I brought guests!”

Her words echoed again and again into the abyss above. Several long moments passed. Nothing but the wind.

“As long as my sister knows you are with me, she probably won’t try to kill you.”

“INTERJECTION. What do you mean probably?” Said the sorcerer.

“My sisters are…old. They will expect the etiquette of the old world. Just dont do anything stupid and let me talk and you should be fine.”

“Sounds easy enough.” Said the student, eager to learn more about her Teacher and exactly what she was.

The Teacher glared at her.

“My sister is shy about her appearance. Don’t make any mention of it, no matter what.”

The Student nodded, it couldn’t be that bad.

There was a sound. At first the student thought it was rain, but it was too regular, too rhythmic. It had to be footsteps. This was concerning, because there were four of them, and they were exceedingly heavy. The Student had expected her teachers catlike movements. But whatever was thundering towards them had no compunctions about stealth. The Students eyes were locked on the corridor across from them. Four huge somethings were coming. Her hand was about to tighten on the hilt of her hatchet, when she saw her Teachers hand over her shoulder in a gesture of reassurance.

From the pit came a grey face, and a pair of scarlet eyes, followed by the same oddly curved, spindly upper body. Then a metal cradle that seemed to blend into the greying flesh, tubes and canisters carrying alien fluids to the rest of the titanic body. The cradle was supported by eight huge, five-jointed mechanical legs that terminated in powerful magnetic industrial clamps. The body pulled its cumbersome weight out from the pit with surprising grace, dragging behind it a huge abdomen, a blend of steel and flesh, both living and dead. Along its spine were several large canisters full of a murky reddish fluid that glowed softly in the darkness. Some of them had unidentifiable shapes floating them.

“Hello Sister.” Said the teacher, bowing her head in an obvious sign to the other that they should do so as well. The sorcerer followed almost immediately, but all the Student could do was gawk. For two reasons, one that she was still trying to take in what she was seeing. She had seen plenty of cyborgs and synthetics before, but this was something completely different. As good as her knowledge of biology and engineering was, she just could not make heads or tails of what she was looking at. Was the body a mech that that she was piloting? Or was it a mutation and this was a prosthetic? What were the tanks on her back? A power source? A stomach? Filters? Her head was spinning.

However, the other reason that she was unable to respond, was because her Teachers nightmarish sister, had her eyes locked on the student. Although she had the same eyes her teacher did, there was something off about them. They were a little too wide, moved a little too fast.

“You.” She said. “You smell new. I don’t think I’ve had one of you before.”

Her voice was gravelly and low, except for the ‘s’ sounds, which she hit with a sort of chattering hiss. Her breathing sounded labored, broken by irregular sucking breaths. The Student was frozen. There was another difference. The Sister had Teeth. Huge, sharp ones, like a shark. If her brain was working properly, she would have noticed that the Sister had also gotten several feet closer to her.

“All this time away and you bring me snacks? How kind. Its positively unlike you.”

“They are guests, Dear Sister. You know why I’m here.”

“Guests? Are you sure? The other one has too much metal for my taste, but I can smell a fine brain inside them.”

She turned towards the Student agian. Taking another deep, sucking breath.

“And smell this one! What an endocrine system! The poor children need cleaner blood don’t you know? Are you sure she can’t spare a kidney?”

The Sister had gotten even closer, she was actually touching the Student’s face now.

“I- I- I don’t-” The Student stammered.

“Enough!” The corridor blazed with scarlet light.

There was a thunderous noise as the Sister reared her colossal body up, and slammed it down to face The Teacher. Producing her own pair of scarlet flames. She screamed at the teacher, vocal chords making a noise far far too large for a throat of that size.

“YOU THINK YOU CAN COME BACK? AFTER ALL THIS TIME?”

The Teacher did not respond.  
“YOU ABANDONED MOTHER. YOU ABANDONED THE CHILDREN. YOU ABANDONED US.”

The Teacher extinguished her fire. She did not raise her head to meet her monstrous sister.

“You know why I left. And you know why I’m here.”

“DUTY THIS. DIRECTIVE THAT. ALWAYS THE NOBLE ONE. TAKING ON THE BURDENS SO WE DIDN’T HAVE TO. WE NEEDED YOU. I NEEDED YOU.”

She raised her head. The teacher was crying. The tears were purple.

“STOP IT…STOP IT…I DONT CARE IF YOU’RE SORRY.”

The Sister seemed to lose some of her intensity. More purple tears. Her voice was softer now.

“Epsilon can’t talk anymore.”

“You must be lonely.” The Teacher stepped forwards to touch her sister.

“Shut up.” She batted the hand away. The mechanical clamps dug tighter into the floor.

The teacher moved in again, and her Sister did not stop her this time, and allowed her huge mechanical body to sink downwards onto the floor. Time passed in heaving breaths and purple tears.


	18. Rain of the Dead

Bodies rained from the ceiling.

What do you do with a corpse that can’t rot? With a body made of carbon-steel and silicate, veins full of preservatives that keep the flesh warm and the heart beating?

The space was massive. The air was hot. Embers drifted from the pools of molten metal far far below. It seemed to be the size of one of the standard megacity blocks, but through the constant shuttering of the freight tunnels that dotted the walls like stars the student saw into the back rooms of the factory. Leagues upon leagues of churning machinery, technology so old that the Student could not recognize it, all cocooned over each other like some impossible viper pit that shed in reverse, collecting skin after skin until its flesh was more dead than alive. Ancient articulated factory arms that ran on direct current wires and old aluminum-ion batteries, broken parts replaced with old carbon-fiber ones, themselves reinforced with nanite cores performing the endless constant labor of a thousand tiny repairs, and in time even those parts were replaced with the unmistakable dull sheen of carbonsteel. Old wires had been cut in favor of Q8 recievers, which themselves were now overgrown with synthetic bio-luminescent nerve tissue that had long rotted away, overtaken with the tessellating braids of a single necroindustrial nervous system. The arms worked incessantly, chopping and excising and suturing with the deft speed of an orb-weaver. 

Coil upon coil of necrosynthetic nerve tissue penetrated everything. It punctured through the walls of the factory and strangled the old wires with its many fingers, pumping new impulses into them. It suffocated the old motors of and augurs, forming a negative of their function, a mold, and simply waiting for them to fail. Waiting to replace them with any combination of dead muscle and metal that it deemed fit. It spilled over the catwalks and shop floors forming a forest of grey stalacmites, each point wreathed in skulls, their mouths and eyes overflowing with greying wires, rotting brains re-purposed into grim wireless relays. 

Cargo drakes, huge and black, emblazoned with a faded, unreadable insignia, descended from freight tunnels carrying train cars full of corpses with their rear talons, the rhythmic beating of their four wings and massive rotors matched only by the roar of their propulsion turbines. The Student watched them pause and preen with their foretalons as the huge cars were upended into the body pits, sending another cascade of corpses into the throng below, she noticed the scars on their underbellies. Their guns had been clipped. 

Surveyors stalked the body pits. They closely resembled the one that the Student had encountered in the recycling center during her incursion into Teleth Thadeyn, but these were evidently a newer model. They strode through the morbid harvest, all four arms working independently to conduct a grisly orchestra as it carefully selected bodies by some unknown set of criteria, and hurled them with mechanical accuracy into the nearby chutes. Humanoids escorted the Surveyors on their duties, carrying long tools of an unknown function that they would occasionally thrust into a corpse before moving on. 

A squadron of ore drones passed overhead, their bellies full of white-hot metal. Rotors buzzing as their lumbering frames turned to face the travelers, huge compound eyes blinking slowly at the passing oddities. Stubby legs twitched in apparent interest. The squadron nearly came to a dead halt until another strange humanoid, baring what the Student assumed to be mechanical wings, inaudibly urged them on. 

The Teacher gestured at the humanoid in the distance and raised an eyebrow at her Student as if to say “Are you impressed?”, which was quite the feat, owing to the Teachers lack of eyebrows. 

The Student responded by looking flat, and puzzled.

As if it was an explanation, the teacher offered: “They’re one of mine.”


	19. Sheol

The original architects called this place Sheol.

Nobody alive knew what that word meant anymore. Sheol was one of the oldest parts of the city. One could call it the roots of Teleth Thadeyn. It was a bunker, a factory, and a laboratory. It was falling apart. All it took was one look at the place. Everything that moved had been repaired a thousand times over in a thousand different ways. Technologies that spanned centuries were all present in one place. A passing glance at a single machine might as well have been a museum. Rough welds. Nanite grafts. Carbonsteel hexes. Synth tissue. Necroindustrial flesh. It was all present. 

The Student did not like this place. It was hot and dry and noisy. It reminded her of the workshops back in Isin. But there was something different about Sheol. The heat here felt hollow. Like a hospital. Or a morgue. That was it, she thought. Thats what Sheol reminded her of. 

A crematorium.

The travelers came to rest at a semicircular platform that overlooked the factory cascade. Originally, this would have been the best seat in the house. Huge, high windows gave an almost 180 degree vertical view, but they had long since been smashed in. The room was full of old dusty crates that the Student repurposed as seating. The Teacher and her larger, more intimidating sister sat apart from the other two. The spoke in hushed tones about something personal. Although curiosity yowled and clawed at her mind like a cat that had never heard the saying about curiosity and cats before, the Student was sharp enough to realize that the Sister would probably not hesitate to eat her if she annoyed her enough. So she sat. Watching the factory move gave her a headache. So she fiddled with her mechanical prosthetic. The Sorcerer did the same. Every few minutes one of the strange humanoids would descend from the throng and thread the needle through the windows, deliver a message to the Sister, and depart in similar fashion. They were surprisingly graceful. The Sorcerer watched them come and go with fascination, the whir of their cooling fan just barely audible above the distant noise.

“QUERY: What do you think they are?“ Said the Sorcerer.

“The humanoids? I’m not sure.“

“STATEMENT: I tried probing one of their minds. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s too small. Not enough brain for that much body.“

“Maybe a hive consciousness?“

“CLARIFICATION: No, you can tell with hive minds immediately. They have a distinct structure. All input, with no processing centers. But with these things, they only have maybe half as much brain as they should.“

The Student watched one of the humanoids. They were slightly taller than her. What she, at first, thought was dull green skin was actually densely packed necrotic muscle tissue. The wings and jets were not original, definitely grafted on, but biosynthetic, eventually joining with the nervous system as they grew. Thick bone tissue grew out from under their “skin” in regular patches around their spine and lungs. Pretty standard stuff all things considered. Their bodies were surprisingly human. The heads were the strange part. The muscles usually reserved for making facial expressions were all but absent, making their face an unmoving bone mask. The shape was strange, as if they were all suffering from an extreme case of cleft lip. Rows of teeth went almost horizontal up to where their nose should have been, with the lower jaw curving upwards to form a sort of triple seal. The eyes were dead and grey. They were blind. 

“Necromachines.“ Said the Teacher, causing the Student to jump so hard it actually knocked off some decaying skin. 

The Student glared.

The Teacher made a facial expression that had no name, but clearly meant something along the lines of “I enjoy being enigmatic, and greatly enjoy how much this annoys you.”

“Mother needed help running the factory. So my sisters and I made these guys. Theyre made of all the rejected human parts. I was the one who proposed that we just do away with skin entirely. Have them grow muscle tissue continuously, and when it starts to rot, you just preserve the dead parts on the outside. They shed it every few years.“

“QUERY: What about the brains? When I ran a diagnostic on one, it only had half a brain.“

“Don’t get her Sstarted on the Brainss“ Interjected the Sister, anticipating the Teachers excitement.

“See, you’re only seeing half the body. The brains are stitched together from brains that were pair-bonded in their previous life. Platonic bonds, breeding pairs, that sort of thing. Well, I figured out we can piggyback off that latent connection to establish a nigh-instant neural link. So one hemisphere is here, in this body, the matching hemisphere is in a second, identical body, somewhere else in the factory!“

“CLARIFICATION REQUEST: So it doesn’t have half a brain. It has one brain, but two bodies?”

“Correct.“

The Student did not like this place.


	20. Homemaking

The stygian depths of an abandoned megacity are no place to make a home, but what other options did she have?

She could stay with the weird grey lady with the synthetic bonus wombs and lower body made of a giant mechanical spider who had threatened to eat her several times and was clearly going through some emotionally tough family shit. That was her other option. 

Evidently, her Teachers business with her monstrous sibling was going to take a while. The Student didn’t mind, she was the one who agreed to tag along with this grey weirdo in the first place so she was in no position to complain. The Sister was even nice enough to let her explore to see if she couldn’t find somewhere more comfortable to camp. The Student thought this might have been a gesture of apology for threatening to eat her earlier, but it also could have simply been an excuse to get her out of their hair for a while. She didn’t ask, she liked exploring. Win-win.

But why did it have to be here of all places? It was as if someone had constructed the factory with the express intent of making her feel uneasy. Everything was hot and bone-dry. Nothing like the oppressive humidity of her homeland. There was no earth. Just kilometer upon kilometer of sheet metal and rotting synthetics, but the Student was no stranger to scavenging, if a home is what she needed, a home is what she would make. 

The Factory was even bigger than she had initially thought, covering several housing block sized areas seemingly divided at random. It should have been an impossible hive of activity, but most of it turned out to be completely abandoned. These sorts of facilities grow and shrink over the years as technology changes. What might take ten workers one year might take only one the next. Huge, fancy new machines might take up entire floors, only to be decommissioned and replaced by something newer and fancier. The Factory was like a hermit crab. Constantly outgrowing shells and casting them aside. 

Abandoned warehouses appeared to be a theme. Rows upon rows of shelves baring dusty crates marked in a language the Student couldn’t read. Obviously curious, she cracked a few of them open and found them to be full of outdated construction materials. Cartridges of alloy screws, too soft by modern standards, made for a model of handheld mass-driver that hadn’t been manufactured in centuries. Plastic-wrapped stacks of synthetic “rotless” wood that, over uncounted years, had done exactly that. And boxes upon boxes of tube steel. The old world really seemed to have a thing for tube steel. She took mental notes of all of these things, and added what seemed useful to the ever-expanding weight of her pack. 

As she progressed deeper into the warehouses, the lights became less and less reliable. Eventually, she was navigating only by the flame blanketing her left hand. It smelled like gasoline, but at the edge of her senses she noticed something else, something faint she couldn’t place. She had no real direction in this labyrinth of corridors, so she decided to try and track down the source. It was strange to think, but the Student found herself much more at ease. It was still sterile and dry, but the overhwelming heat and noise of the factory couldn’t reach her here. In these forgotten corridors it was nice and cool. Almost cozy.

Everything seemed so far away, but here she was at the bottom of the world, humming a wandering tune she learned when she was little. Gods, was she actually enjoying herself? 

She was thousands of miles from what was once her home, everyone she had ever known and loved was dead, her only friends were a cyborg and a who-knows-what that she didn’t even really know that well, and the three of them were now deep below the earths crust, in a place where oxygen had no business being, in the abandoned husk of a secret factory powered by the dead, built to produce some equally secret thing that was by her best guess probably some sort of grave sin against the laws of man and nature alike, and she was enjoying herself. 

She rounded a corner, and found the source of the scent. 

It was an abandoned shop floor that had been used to store decommissioned batteries, and judging by the huge hole in the ceiling, so had the floor above this one. What used to be rows of tall metal shelves had been turned into a veritable forest of twisted metal, warped out of shape and burned smooth by years of slow leaks from the burden they carried. This corrosive cesspit was overcome by a massive nest of rust-eaters. Huge nest spikes, larger than any the student had ever seen, filled the room. They covered the floor in clusters as big as the Student was tall, and equally large ones hung from the ceiling like bizarre insect-stuffed fruit. 

A drone took notice of the intruder and diverted course to inspect her. It hung in the air in front of her, changing the RPM of its rotor to produce a rhythmic hum, and flickered the little blue lights on its antennae. She immediately recognized the rust-eater body language for “Halt! Who Goes There?”, and backed off

These guys were common in the glowing swamp. Though the ones near her were a lot smaller. This one was as big as her head, and had pretty orange and white markings instead of the mottled camo she was used to. A different species perhaps?

The blinking and humming slowed as the Student took a few gracious steps back, but the rust-eater didn’t let up. It hovered towards her, but allowed her to maintain a distance. It seemed curious about the new creature. A long proboscis extended from the creatures head, dripping with what the Student knew was an extremely corrosive digestive fluid. There was a moment of panic. Was she still too close? Are these versions more aggressive? Could she even survive if the hive decided to swam? But a moment later, the proboscis retracted inside, the drones olfactory examination complete. She decided to move on.

—

Home was an abandoned maintenance closet. A small, unassuming door in the side of an abandoned heavy cargo corridor. An outrcopping in the concrete never inteded for habitation, filled with pipes and dials and gauges meant as a place to check the pulse of the veins and arteries that kept the factory running. The tunnel was dark now, the huge metal shutter that connected to the factory floor was closed tight. Although the floodlights still clung to what power they could, the cavernous space was quiet and dim. 

The space inside was about eight meters square, covered wall-to-wall with electronic panels that contained all manor of fuses and dials and switches, with a second “level” barely four meters across, accessible by a small ladder, and mainly consisting of large pipes with valves on them. 

The Student had made several improvements. 

First, a workstation made from two overturned crates and some sheet metal assembled into a sturdy desk, as well as a third smaller crate for a chair. Here she worked by conjured firelight to repair the main switchboard for the room until she could get the original lights working. The ancient filaments exploded when she turned the power on, so instead she spent some time filling the intact bulbs with a sort of bio-luminescent algae. She strung together several of these little jars and hung them from the ceiling. 

Next came the water. One of the pipes that made of the floor of the upper level was actually an emergency chemical shower. It worked via a large button, that dispensed a 20 second deluge of freezing water with skin-stripping force, and then drained into a grate in the concrete floor. Tweaking the plumbing involved attempting to wrest the ancient valves out of place, and it nearly tore her mechanical arm out of its implants, but after adding some hinges to the grate and several layers of plastic sheeting to contain the moisture and add privacy, she had a functioning shower-slash-bathroom. 

Next, the heating. This was going to be hard, because it required actually constructing things. Constructing things required parts, which required dragging large cumbersome pieces of metal long distances, but with the help of a makeshift sled and a plasma cutter she found on a corpse, the work went quicker than expected. A metal crate full of tube steel was modified with said tube steel into a (frankly impressive) convection oven/stovetop combo that was placed up against one wall directly under the rooms ventilation shaft. This was also the ideal place to hang the laundry line. 

Last was the bed. She had a bedroll in her pack, but now she had the chance for some real comfort. A frame was simple enough to weld together, but the real work was cutting up layer after layer of plastic sheeting, sewing it into a sort of sack, and then stuffing that sack with insulation until you had enough layers to make a serviceable mattress. She made it extra big. She had the time. She even dragged a couple of the smaller crates up the ladder and turned them into a nightstand, complete with an algae lamp. 

There was still work to be done, but the room was warm now. Her clothes were stewing with some soap made with her own body fat in the large pot she had made from a construction mech finger. She stood with one foot on the makeshift chair and stared at the synthetic gauze wraps that served as her underwear. She had done this dozens of times before, but she always dreaded it. She undid the knot, and began to gingerly unwind the fabric. 

“Fuck.“ she winced through gritted teeth, as the patch of black, rotten, flesh on her thigh peeled off with the bandage. She tried not to look. It was always better if she didn’t look. Her mechanical arm fumbled for the graft she had prepared, pressing it flush against the exposed musculature. The spirals on her synthetic arm came to life as she ran two fingers along the seam of the wound, blood vessel to blood vessel, vein to vein, artery to artery. She had learned to do the nerves last. 

She washed off the dead skin in the shower. The cold water helped bring her back to her senses. She tossed the gauze into the wash bin with the rest of her clothing and climbed the ladder up to where she had set up her bed. She had covered the floor in thick sheeting, and even hung some from the ceiling like curtains to make a small but humble bedroom. 

One by one she undid the pins that kept her mechanical arm in place, placing them in the little tray on her nightstand she had prepared for them. She unscrewed her arm from its socket, and placed it on the little metal shelf she had bolted to the wall. The relief of its weight simultaneously a burden lifted, and a sudden sense of vulnerability. 

She surveyed the room. The soft orange glow of the algae lanterns, the desk, the stove, the shower, the shelves and hooks and clothes drying on the line. She was proud. It was a forgotten little cavity, deep in the bones of the titanic corpse that was the world. It was home.


	21. Green Space

The city was drowning in itself.

Ever upwards Teleth Thadeyn was built, racing against the toxic clouds, desperate to keep its lungs free of the burning rain. It seemed to the builders that every level they added above, the clouds only grew thicker, billowed higher. Every triumph of industry could only stare up at the amber sky and choke, as eventually it too was built upon. 

The travelers were above the housing block layer now. They had entered what the Teacher called the “Upper City”. Originally the place they now stood was where the city administration lived, it had roads and homes and shopping centers, nice ones, nothing like the endless concrete and steel of the housing blocks below them. Everything here was built to be shielded from the rain. Covered walkways and verandas would allow the denizens to go for a stroll even in the worst weather. 

All of it was gone. Overtaken by plant life. Huge roots descended from the ceiling. They sunk into everything, reaching like thousand-fingered hands and gripping the structures below. Most were crushed, but others were suspended in place. The upper floors of skyscrapers held aloft by titanic roots when their foundations were churned into peat. Rivers cascaded from the ceiling, running through the corpses of these old citadels and collecting in lakes, real lakes, on the earthen ground. 

Something very old in the students mind wanted desperately to sprint down to their shores, to swim and drink from their true natural waters. She agreed with this part of her brain and a motion was passed in her brain-parliament to tell her legs to do exactly that. However they were quickly vetoed by her Teacher, who barely managed to snag the back of her coat before she could really take off. The resultant coughing and swearing stopped short when she saw what her teacher was pointing at. 

The marine drake was sitting just below the surface, sonar array peeking above the waves. The massive creature seemed to notice that the travelers were not going to become its next meal, and slipped its titanic body around into the dark waters with a flippant sonar ping. As it turned to leave it seemed to make a deliberate show of the missile pods on its back. The Student guessed that this was the drakes way of telling them not to mess with it. 

As the travelers continued up the slow incline of the basin the roots became thicker and thicker, forming what could almost be called a forest. They seemed to congregate in specific areas, though by what criteria the student could not tell. With the density came darkness. Eventually the roots grew so thick that it almost entirely blocked out the floodlights that illuminated the colossal space, reducing the light to a low gloom. 

Eventually the group decided to make camp and rest. They found a space between several of the root-knots with stable and dry ground. As the others dozed off, the students curiosity got the better of her. She was sure she had seen something in the center of one of these knots. She traveled a ways from the group as not to wake them, and went to work with a freshly sharpened hatchet. 

It took her maybe half an hour to clear the dense foliage. As she cut, she noticed that the roots here seemed to grow back much more quickly than the ones along the path. When she reached the center, she realized why.

An old pre-war construction mech. Cumbersome things that had to actually be piloted. This one still was. The roots sank into the long-dead worker, running under their skin, piercing in and out at regular intervals. Stranger still, the roots didnt seem to be feeding off the body, they seemed to be feeding it. The skin was being kept fresh, but had taken on an angry purple color veined with red, like a bruise. Odd, but not out of the ordinary. All sorts of things involved corpses in their life cycles these days. The part that truly disturbed the student was an almost imperceptible motion. A tiny vibration.

Its heart was beating.


	22. The Elevator to Heaven

The toxic clouds were the walls of heaven.

And supposedly, the little cartridge the Student now held in her hands was the key to the gate. 

The freight elevator raced upwards with impossible speed, but only the barest sensation of movement. The grav-lev plates in the floor made the trip surprisingly comfortable, if a bit cramped. Cargo drakes took up most of the available space that was not already occupied by a shipping container. The Student watched them preen and chatter with utter fascination. She had always liked bioindustrials. 

Evidently, so did the Sorcerer. Who was slowly approaching one of the drakes with a hand extended. There was a blast of static in the Student’s ears as the radio in her implants picked up the creatures call. Universal bioindustrial language for “back off”. The huge creature reared back, extending its wings and exposing the space under its arms where its guns used to be. The Sorcerer stopped moving immediately.

“REASSURANCE: Easy, easy.“

As the Sorcerer spoke, the whine of radio static seemed to die down. They repeated the words over and over again, the noise of the drakes static cry lessening with every repetition. And slowly, very slowly, the drake started to approach. wings non-threateningly folded, the radar arrays on its head spinning gently in the direction of the new visitor. The other drakes watched, motionless. 

The drake stopped just outside of touching distance. It had determined that the Sorcerer was not a threat, but was still unsure if it was a friend. The radio static morphed into a sort of chirping babble as the creature exchanged unintelligible words with the Sorcerer. 

The Student couldn’t understand it, but she was able to make out individual words like “Food” and “Friend” and “Job”. As she was attempting to puzzle through the conversation, as if without warning, the Drake attempted to place its entire head on the Sorcerer’s shoulder. A gesture of affection and acceptance, but one that weighed over ten tons. The Sorcerer was knocked to the floor. After a moment of confusion, the drake began to circle its huge body around the Sorcerer as they sat up, placing its head on the ground next to its new friend in prime head scratching position. 

“STATEMENT: You can come say hello if you like.“ 

“Are you sure?“

“REASSURANCE: Just move slowly. They see via radar, so sudden motion will startle them.“

The Student obliged, seating herself on the other side of the creatures smooth, nearly featureless head. Its ailerons twitched pleasantly as she joined in scratching its head. 

“You’re good with them.“

“PLEASED: I used to spend time in the rookeries back in Azis. Those models were much smaller, but I figured the same principals applied.“

“You could have died.“

“STATEMENT: Maybe, but I doubt it. Im mostly metal and wires. Not tasty by their standards. They like biologicals.“

“Oh. Well.” 

The Student looked down at the drake, who was chirping happily, its mouth reassuringly closed.

“You seem to know a lot about these guys.“

“STATEMENT: I suppose you could say they were an obsession. Something to keep my mind occupied.“

The Student was quiet. Vague, blurred memories of her time as a pit mechanic. Pouring herself into her work to avoid memories of home. 

The grav-lev engines hummed. 

“STATEMENT: We were treated well by harem caste standards. We even got access to the library. But we were not allowed to leave the estate.“

“It sounds lonely.“

“STATEMENT: You would know.“

“I’m sorry?“

“APOLOGY: Your thoughts are loud.“

“Well don’t listen!“

“APOLOGY: I did not intend to pry. I will refrain in the future.“

There was another quiet moment as the Student struggled to not think about thinking about whether or not the Sorcerer was reading her mind or not. This made her head hurt, and she simply gave up.

“You’re right though.“

The drake chirped contentedly. The grav-lev engines hummed.

“STATEMENT: Thinking back, I was jealous of them.”

“Wings.“

The Sorcerer nodded.

“STATEMENT: But not just the wings. Drakes are efficient creatures. They don’t feel anything they don’t need to. No pleasure, no pain, just raw information.”

“Was it the right choice? Your body now?“

“STATEMENT: Before this, I never had a body. I was a toy. A doll with swappable parts. I have been taken apart and put back together more times than I can count. I have felt enough for ten lifetimes.“

“It must be lonely.”

“STATEMENT: You would know.“


	23. Overgrowth

Dead eyes locked onto the Student as the mech rumbled to life.

Ancient hydraulics groaned under the weight of disuse as the creaking of ancient articulations cracked and snapped the roots that wound around it. 

As it stood over the student, the head of the body pinned into its cockpit swung slowly on its neck, but never moved its sunken grey eyes from the Student. 

A holoreel flickered to life above its head, displaying string of garbled corrupted text text in large flashing letters. The onboard speakers started to pop and whine. The remnants of some ancient proximity alarm, loudly announcing to the surrounding area that any citizen move back from the heavy industrial work. The words came out as broken syllables and blasts of radio static.

The thing was fast, even for its immense size and weight. Huge, mechanical hands gripped a hydraulic power spade and charged the Student. With a noise like a passing train, the augurs in its arms fired into action and swung the spade in a horizontal arc at the student, clipping the tops of the gnarled bushes that covered the landscape. She just barely managed to leap out of the way, silently thanking herself for the implants in her shins. One hit from the thing could split her in half. It was fast and strong but it still had to wind up its colossal weight before moving. 

Another blast of meaningless syllables and static. The roots and leaves that covered the mech writhed and surged, sending the body at its heart into shivering convulsions. The eyes never changed position. Again, the mech wound up to strike, arcing the shovel down over its head and slamming into the earth with a tremendous noise. The student easily cleared the blow, but her legs buckled as the force from the impact shook the ground. 

Another blast of static and nonsense. The mech seemed to notice the hesitation, and swept the great spade sideways through the earth, sending a shower of stones and soil into the air. The Student was only barely able to dodge this time. This was getting exhausting. She needed a plan. Again, she met the dead, grey eyes. 

She had her plan.

She backed off. Not too much, but just enough. A blast of static. The Mech wound up for another thrust. She started to concentrate.

Carbon. 

The augurs fired, sending the point of the huge spade on a direct collision course with the students neck with incredible speed.

Oxygen.

She leveraged the augments in her shins and lept straight up into the air, clearing right over the spade with barely inches to spare, but she couldn’t worry about that now.

Hydrogen.

She landed on the flat head of the spade for just a moment, using it as footing to propel herself to her real target. Again, she saw the corpse in the cockpit, and met its eyes, just as close as she was before.

Lithium. 

The explosion hit the dead-center of the mech. Turning metal and plastic into slag, and outright boiling most biological matter. The force of it sent the student tumbling backward, away from the impact. She landed upside-down in a large scrub. As soon as her head stopped spinning, she checked on the success of her plan. 

The first thing she noticed was that it was, to her surprise, still moving. It was wreathed in flames as the bramble of roots and leaves slowly burned away. It swung the spade in random directions, pinging off surroundings it could no longer see, searching frantically for the hairless mutant cyborg that had just melted its sensory organs. The second thing she noticed is that the holoreel above its head had changed color, transmitting a different message. Apparently this part of the mechs onboard memory had escaped damage, and the student could make out clearly what it said.

“UNIT DAMAGED : HOSTILE : SUMMONING SECURITY“


	24. The Knight

UNIT DAMAGED : HOSTILE : SUMMONING SECURITY

The mech writhed and screamed as its long-dead pilot slowly burned away. It blindly swung the power spade in a desperate attempt to take its aggressor with it. Its movements only became more drunken as its control systems failed one by one, and eventually the incredible force of its own improvised weapon swung the entire mech off balance, buckling under its own weight and tumbling to the floor with a noise like a huge drum. The holotape above its head flickering anemically as it hemorrhaged the contents of its fuel cells into the earth.

The Student caught her breath. Her arm still tingled from the effort of creating a fireball that size. The veins in her hand pulsed with a lithium purple, and she watched as they slowly faded back to the dull red she was used to. 

Her eye was drawn to the faint holotape on the wreckage of the mech. She checked her HUD implants and started to cycle through the different bands of communication it could hear. If these old construction mechs were still working after all this time, maybe security was too?

Either way, this was not a place to stick around, she had to find her friends and make sure they didnt wake up any more of these things. Although on second thought they were probably not as excited to dig through ancient technology melded to corpses as she was. She set off at a brisk pace, flicking her way through communication channels as she went. 

Growing up in the glowing swamp is tough. Being a trapper in the glowing swamp is also tough. Just avoiding the vicious wildlife is dangerous enough, but competing with them for food is the sort of thing that you are either good at, or dead. Wisdom passes quickly and efficiently from generation to generation in the form of people actually coming back from trapping excursions. It requires just the right balance of patience and instinct. One has to know exactly how long to leave a trap alone enough to find prey, but also not leave them so alone that the catch is poached. All the while avoiding the sights of the almost comically dangerous wildlife. The Student liked to think she had a good sense for avoiding predators. She described it as if the hairs on her back would stand up when she was being watched. 

This was actually horseshit, as completely unbeknownst to her at that moment, a Military-grade Security EXO was tracking her every movement.

They had set up camp by the edge of a cliff. It was a beautiful view that overlooked the ancient-war-machine-infested-lake below. Her friends were sitting by the fire. They appeared to be playing some sort of game that involved stacking small rocks on top of each other, and the Sorcerer was clearly winning. The Student stumbled into the small clearing panicked and covered in sweat, which wasn’t terribly out of the ordinary, but still cause for conversation.

“You two can play rock stack later, we gotta move.“

“STATEMENT: Tell us on the way.“

The pair did not ask questions, and immediately stood to leave. The student recounted her encounter, and subsequent victory over the root-tangled security mech. The Sorcerer seemed interested in the odd triple-necromechanichal symbiosis sort of thing going on, but when she mentioned the security call, the Teachers eyes darkened. 

“Sorcerer.“

“QUERY?“

“Check for delta-band signals.“

The Sorcerer gripped their staff, there was a gentle whirring noise as they concentrated. 

“RESULT : STATEMENT: Three sources.“

“Are you sure?“

“STATEMENT: Wait… There’s a fourth. Further away. It’s masked.“

“Can you crack it?“

“STATEMENT: Yes, it is using an outdated algorithm. Just a moment.“

“Please hurry. I would rather not deal with security.“

This put the Student ill at ease. If security made the teacher nervous, it should be outright terrifying to her. The Sorcerer broke the silence.

“STATEMENT: DECRYPTION COMPLETE: I think its talking in code. I can’t make heads or tails of it.“

The Teacher was getting uncharacteristically agitated.

“Please just repeat the last message!“

The Sorcerer’s voice changed, becoming much lower.

“RELAY: Tango. Zero. Three. Dash. One. One. Null-point. Cross. Hern.“

The Teacher’s eyes went wide. She shouted something along the lines of “Move!” or “Get down!” or “Scatter!” but her voice was lost under the deafening crack of a rifle. The rock behind them exploded into rubble as the bullet punched through it with no more care than a bully’s foot through a sandcastle. 

The Student only saw it clearly for a moment. A humanoid. Only slightly taller than her. A knight. But not like the knights back in new babel. Implants and armor there were reverse-engineered from the weapons of ancient soldiers, made from reclaimed metal salvaged from the scrap fields. The brave would prove their worth by killing the spectres of old soldiers that still wandered the wastes. Even for elites, armor was a patchwork of disparate technology. It was a mark of pride, a trophy case. The more mismatched your armor was, the more diverse your conquest. 

There was nothing even remotely ornamental about the security knight. Every inch of it was covered in unmarked, nigh-indestructible plates of matte-black carbonsteel. This was a killing machine built at the height of the old world. 

It landed with almost no sound, and scythed its weapon straight at the Student’s neck, who barely managed to duck in time. The Student watched in slow motion as the gravity bayonet on the knights rifle-glaive thing distorted the swathe of spacetime that her neck had occupied only a split second earlier. 

It was just too fast. With a single elegant and practiced motion, the knight leveraged the momentum of the swing into a position that left the rifle pointing directly at the Student’s heart. 

There was a flash of light. It fired. 

While the Teachers fireball was a direct hit, carbonsteel is impossibly heat-resistant. It did little more than temporarily blind the security knight. 

The bullet missed by about six inches. It slammed into the student’s mechanical arm, shattering the articulation and twisting it backwards into useless dead weight. The sheer force of the impact sent her upper body twisting. The implants that reinforced her spine strained, only barely kept it from snapping. Big red letters flashed in the Student’s HUD about the damage sustained. 

The knight was unperturbed. There was a clang of metal-on-metal as a lightning-fast roundhouse kick connected with the Sorcerers midsection. Their metal frame seemed like a doll as it was sent backwards into the brush, tumbling limp over the ground, indicator lights flickering. 

The Teacher went for its legs, dropping to all fours and grabbing at it in an effort to immobilize it. The knight leapt backwards into the air, avoiding the sweep, and worked the bolt on its weapon. It was ready for another attack.

And suddenly, the Student had a plan.

“Miss! I can kill it! We have to get it in the air again!“

“We barely survived the first shot!”

She grinned that lipless grin.

“But I will do my best!“

The Teacher had that look in her eye again. Psycho. 

The knight turned its head to the Student. The four telescoping optics that served as its face seemed to temporarily refocus themselves on her. She shivered. It was glaring at her. She hadn’t even considered that there was a person underneath it.

It faced the Teacher. Slowly, it levied its weapon against its shoulder like a lance, shifting its weight into a position that resembled a sprinter taking their place at the starting line. The Teacher crouched down on all fours again. A standoff. They were going to settle this with a test of speed.

The Student concentrated. Her heart hammered against the plating in her chest like it wanted to get out. 

Carbon.

The Knight dashed forwards. The stabilizer jets along its armor roared to life, leaving a trail of blue flame in their wake. The air rippled as the knights gravity bayonet tore through it.

Oxygen.

The Teacher leapt forwards. She was faster than any being her size had any right to be. But it was noting compared to the knight.

Hydrogen.

There was a fountain of purple blood. At the last second, the Teacher dove to the side, catching the knights ankle with her weird prehensile feet-fingers. She had turned the knights incredible momentum against it, using her own bodyweight to literally throw the knight off balance. It spiraled through the air like a man caught in a flash flood, stabilizer jets fighting to return balance. She roared with the effort, and the pain of her wound.

“Catch!“

Lithium.

Ka-Boom. Using the ground as a brace, the student made sure that every last ounce of force was used to send the knight careening over the edge of the cliff. As it passed over the edge, there was a defiant crack as it fired its rifle into the air, sending the bullet whizzing uselessly into the distance. 

“Did we get it?“

Even turning her head to see her teacher made the world spin. She had used damn near the last of her energy to make that fireball. With dizzy elation she responded.

“Yeah. Yeah I think we did.“

“Ah. Excellent. Well done.“

“How’s your wound?“

“I need to stop the bleeding. It clipped one of my sub-hearts. I can regenerate it, as long as I don’t move for a few hours.“

“I have some bandages in my- Do you hear that?”

There was a sound like cybernetically augmented human using their stabilizer jets to leap great distances with the intent of revenge.

“Damn.“

The knight stopped at the pinnacle of its jump, hovering lazily towards the cliffside, and casually dropping a few feet from the downed companions. It made a show of working the bolt on its rifle, performing every action with decided malice. 

It didn’t get halfway through the process when, to everyone’s surprise, a construction mech burst from the foliage, power spade arcing over its head and slamming down onto the knight. It connected with an anticlimactic plonk, crushing the knight into an extremely dead pile of twisted metal and gore. 

The Student and the Teacher swore in surprise, but the panic faded from their voices as they looked up to see the Sorcerer riding atop the mechs shoulders, various wires puppeting the corpse at the controls. 

After a few stunned moments, the student gave a thumbs up. The Sorcerer gave a thumbs up.

Almost as an afterthought, she said to nobody in particular:

“Teacher is bleeding, there’s gauze in my backpack.“

and then promptly blacked out.


	25. Vivisection With The Girls

How many post-humans does it take to dissect a biomechanichally enhanced commando?

Evidently, three. 

One to plug into the dead commando’s onboard computer to salvage information and prevent the dead-hand switch from noticing that the commando’s brain activity had reached zero, alerting home base that the commando was killed, and receiving orders to detonate the bomb implanted at the base of the neck specifically to destroy the corpse in case any rowdy wanderers wanted to dissect it for materials. 

One to continuously cauterize the open wounds so the commando’s cellular structure, lovingly hand-tailored to explosively regenerate in the event of injury, would not heal shut over everyone elses arms as they were rooting around inside. 

And one to do the actual dissection work of knowing what to look for in a body, like knowing how to unscrew plate metal from reinforced bone, or how to remove delicate neuro-circuitry without damaging it, or the difference between valuable cerebrospinal fluid and worthless endocrine runoff. 

It was a grisly scene. A cyborg, a mutant, and a who-knows-what, crouched over a mangled corpse as if they were teenagers on an interrupted road trip, staring at a mysteriously non-functioning engine and doing their best to sound like they do, in fact, know what a carburetor is, what it does, and where it is located. It was a bonding experience. They were bonding. 

“Query: liver?“ 

“Wrong again, its a gallbladder. Teacher has you zero for six.“ Said the student, resigning the gallbladder into an open sterile container full of mysterious liquid. 

“You are very bad at this.” Said the teacher, using her foot to draw another tally mark in the dirt. 

“Statement: I do not have organs. I am at a disadvantage.“

“Just because you have organs doesn’t mean you’ll know what they’re called.“

“Indeed. It’s not like they come with nameplates.“ said the teacher, nodding. 

With a small noise of effort, the Student held aloft another organ.

“Query: Kidney?“

“Lung?“

“Lung. Point Teacher. Aaaand that was the last major organ I could salvage so I think the game goes to Teacher.“

The Teacher made another victorious tally mark in the dirt. “Consider this revenge for your victory at rock-stack.“

The Student took a quick stretch break, rolling her arms and neck. “Head comes next, you done with the brain yet? I don’t want to start unscrewing the implants until the delicate stuff is done.“

“Statement: Nearly. There is very little in the way of information stored here, but the architecture is fascinating. Very efficient. Please ensure that you do not damage it upon removal.”

“Huh. Well get what you can and wipe it when you’re done. I’ll try to save what hardware I can, but its tough to do all this without my right arm.“ She said, waggling the stump.

“Statement: Oh. Right.“

“Something wrong?“

“Statement: To be honest I had forgotten about your arm. I apologize. I did not mean to rush you.“

“Nah don’ worry about it.“

“Confirm: Really?“

“Don’t you worry wirehead, I got a plan.“

The Student winked at the Sorcerer, who did not react. There was a moment where the Student realized that her eye guards were up. She retracted the left one and winked at the Sorcerer, who did not react again. The Student realized that because they could only see one eye, it appeared as if she had only blinked. She retracted both eye shields, and winked a third time. The Sorcerer did not react, because they did not have a face. The Student figured that they got the picture and moved on. 

“Yeah its good don’t worry.“

“Statement: I will go to sleep and dedicate all available processing power to the transfer. This may take a while. You should rest, but please wake me up if we get attacked again.“

The Student gave a thumbs up, which the Sorcerer returned. The indicator light on their “face” started to slowly pulse. The Student stretched again, looking over her one-handiwork. She was good at this. 

“Quite the butcher, aren’t you?“ Grinned the Teacher, who had again startled her student by managing to get several feet closer without anyone realizing.

After catching her breath, the Student managed to choke out a “Thank you. I have a lot of practice.”

“Your knowledge of machines and anatomy would be impressive on their own. Its rare to find someone who understands both, especially as well as you do.“

“You sound like my old foreman. Its not terribly complicated. Plus Im cheating.”

“Oh?“ The Teacher assumed a posture like someone sitting cross-legged and petting a cat, except she was upside down, sitting on her hands and using her feet to pet the cat which was actually her head. 

“…Yeah…“ She took a moment to salvage her train of thought. “See, the way I see it, its all machines. Some of em are just made of meat.”

The Teacher did not have eyebrows, but the Student got the sense that if she did, she was arching one of them.

“Like, think of a combustion engine. In goes air and fuel, and out comes mechanical force, right? Now if you think about it, a heart works the same way. In goes chemical energy, out comes hydraulic force.“

She ran her eyes over the body again. She looped a finger around some arteries and lifted them up.

“See these? Pipes.“

She pointed to some nerve tissue. 

“Wires.“

She knocked on a piece of exposed bone.

“And this is the chassis.“

She looked at her own hand.

“Its all just filters and pumps and heat sinks and fermentation tanks. Hell, if its got a name you can make it out of meat. Once I understood that, everything just became blueprints. If you’re leaking fuel, you patch the hole. If you’ve broken an axle, you reinforce it.“

“I see, but how is that cheating?“

The Student was quiet for a moment, lost in a dozen hazy memories at once. 

“Well, people aren’t machines.“

The Teacher glanced over at the sleeping Sorcerer. 

“You know what I mean miss. Machines can’t feel pain. Machines can’t suffer.” 

Her voice became distant.

“Machines can’t beg for the pain to stop. Machines can’t beg you to kill them. Machines can’t die in your arms.“

The Teacher had unfurled herself to wrap her gangly limbs around the little mutant, who found her weird springy collarbone surprisingly comfortable. 

“Im no doctor. My hands are good, but they’re too rough, only good for fixing machines.“

“What about this?“ said the Teacher, tapping the thick bandages around the wound where the knight had clipped her. “You fixed this, didn’t you?”

“Doesn’t it hurt?“

“Oh yes. But it would hurt more if you weren’t here to help.“


	26. Teleth Thadeyn

The sight of the ruined megacity breaks definition.

One could measure the size of the foundation, (roughly four thousand kilometers square), and the height of the tower, (just shy of twenty kilometers high) but those numbers would mean nothing to one who has not seen the ruin with their own eyes. 

And few have. At the cities foot lies the remains of some ancient urban sprawl. A shifting, overgrown labyrinth of half-crumbled structures and rubble soaked in burning rain, patrolled by rumors of rampant specters of ancient holy warriors and lightning-fast creatures that descend from the toxic clouds to abduct unwary scavengers. Every culture has their own version of the stories. Be they a prince of new Babel, or a newborn bullet-brand, all are warned to avoid the ruins at all cost. Do not approach the stone forests. The cities belong to the old gods. 

Those rare few lucky enough to return from the ruin fields all bear the same stories. Teleth Thadeyn does not tower over its surroundings. Men do not tower over the threads of a carpet, or the grains of sand that make up a beach. To tower, one requires a likeness to ones surroundings, a co-existence with them. For one to tower, it requires acknowledgement of the things one is towering over, to observe them as a king does his subjects, and to deem themselves as greater. Teleth Thadeyn does not tower over its surroundings. It dominates them, conquers them, it crushes them under its sheer scale for daring to even consider that they were even worth observing in the same context. 

Above the maze of rubble, above the mountain into which the city is thrust like the rusting blade of a forgotten king, above the ruined and rain-poisoned world, Teleth Thadeyn leaves a wake in the sky, cutting through the ever-roiling acid storm with no more effort than a child dragging a finger through the surface of a placid lake. From the ground, one can watch as this finger of the old gods grasps upward, searching blindly for air that will not burn its lungs. One can watch ripples form in the dull orange clouds, surging and propagating over and over like the waves of an impossible sea, suspended upside-down from the vault of the sky. 

Teleth Thadeyn was constructed in defiance of the world. A citadel against the wars, against the engines of calamity, against the burning sky, against the lightning that raked against its hide, against the barren farms and poison rivers. Those who see the city walls are struck with the unfathomable strength of its architects. The impossible task of imagining how one would even deign to create such a thing. To be able to construct something like Teleth Thadeyn, to be able to resist the world in its entirety, one would have to be a god. 

Whoever made the city, whatever powers conspired or converged to create it, they had the power to reshape the world itself in their image, and this was their design. An immovable object upon which the tides of a rotting world crash. 

And yet, here it decays. Rotting from the inside.


	27. The Angel

Corpses wandered the halls of heaven, wading shin-deep in dust.

She was surprised. Even in heaven there were husks. These ones were different from the others she had seen below. There was a sort of utility to the laborer husks. Cheap parts, exposed skin. Band-aid fixes to prolong the life of something disposable. Apparently, even the corpses were nicer in heaven. 

These ones had shells over their mechanical parts. Smooth, airbrushed, fashionable pieces of aluminum that would look quite elegant if they weren’t coated in grime. In place of more utilitarian legs, their shins had been replaced with flexible metal slats that would have given them a sort of graceful, avian gait, were it not for the dust that reduced them to a pitiful shuffle. 

Strangest was the head. There were no visible sensory organs. Just smooth, featureless gold.

Stranger still was their behavior. Many of them seemed to clutch objects in their hands. Cups, knives, scraps of cloth, small stones, empty batteries. Hundreds of them trudged through the streets, holding random objects to their breast as one would do a small bird, or a letter from a loved one. At first, the travelers thought they were running errands, or acting as couriers. The Student followed one for nigh on four hours, only to realize that it was simply walking in a complicated loop, struggling endlessly against the sea of dust. 

Everything in heaven was coated with dust. It blanketed every surface, falling from the walls in cascades from even the slightest disturbance. Dust drifted slowly from the ceiling like flakes of dry, lifeless snow. It hung in curtains to the windows, reducing the light of any “indoor” space to a sort of foggy grey haze. 

The air “outside” was not much better. The great domed peak of Teleth Thadeyn was lit by an artificial sun. A huge sphere of brilliant UV light that listed almost imperceptibly on its gravity jets. Every morning it would emerge from some hole on the east side of heaven and drift slowly across the sky until it sank into some other hole in the west. 

Over the years, the sun had apparently fallen into disrepair. Some of the lamps on its surface were broken, and from the ground, it appeared as if moths had gotten to it. The shadows it cast were wrong. Immediately, one knew that this was not the sun. This was hundreds of things pretending to be the sun and they were just a little off. The shadows they cast fanned out ever so slightly. It gave the appearance that, hiding just behind you, were dozens of things that looked just like you, but a little off. None of the travelers liked the sun here. 

It would flicker. Like a flashlight on low batteries, the sun would flicker. Usually for only a few moments before returning to normal. It gave the student a splitting headache. There was some deep lizard part of the brain that was terrified out of its wits by the flickering sun. The oldest parts of her knew that the entire world being plunged into night, and then returning to day, then going back and forth several times, is supposed to take hours, not seconds. 

But despite her gibbering hind-brain, there was something else that set the travelers on edge. Whenever the sun died for more than a few moments, all the husks would freeze, stopping completely motionless, like rabbits hearing the snap of a nearby branch. 

It was on their third night, close to dusk, when it happened. The group was already planning on setting up camp in the lobby of one of the buildings, when the sun flickered and died. 

The Student was returning from her evening foraging when everything went black. It took her visor a few moments to adjust to the dark, but she saw two things very clearly: 

There was a light in the distance, accompanied by a steady humming noise, hovering just below the roofline, and it was coming closer. 

Whatever the light was, the Husks were terrified of it. They scrambled to hide. Ancient ligatures snapping under the sudden explosive movement, leaping to move just slightly faster under the tide of dust. Those that could stand, flung themselves into open doorways, hiding behind discarded furniture, those that could not, frantically clawed at the dunes of dust, attempting to dig, to bury themselves completely in an attempt to hide from whatever was coming. 

The Student followed suit, dropping her items and somersaulting through the broad open window of an abandoned shop, burying her body in a dust dune, covering everything but her eyes. She had to see what the light was. 

After what felt like hours, she saw the angel. 

It was huge, nearly twenty feet tall, long and thin, and had the same elegant brushed-aluminum curves of the husks, but none of its bodyparts actually contacted each other. In place of mechanical joints, it seemed to be supported by magnetic actions that held its eerie, brushed-aluminum skeletal frame in place. In one hand, it gripped a long rifle-spear with a forked bayonet that reminded the student of the fishing spears she was taught to make when the was little. 

It moved with a strange, almost dreamlike gait, head forward, spine almost parallel to the ground. It was as if it were underwater, walking on the balls of its feet to push itself along the bottom of a lake, rather than supporting its weight on shins and knees. 

When it bent down to peer into the windows of the ground floor, the student discovered that the source of the light was its head. There had to be some sort of source to the light, but as far as she could tell, the angels entire head was simply an orb of plasma. 

As it peered into the empty rooms, whatever it was that contained the plasma started to blow away the dust it was near, revealing a poor unlucky husk. 

The humming noise suddenly became deafening as the angel reared up like a cobra, mag-lev joints actuating with incredible speed to twist its body upwards. It speared the defenseless husk on the end of its spear with deft efficiency, and activated the rifle. 

There was a flash, and the husk was dust.


	28. Her Shattered Right Arm Was A Lease

Her shattered right arm was a lease.

By getting shot, she was responsible for replacement/repair of the property, as well as any further losses on the part of The Honorable and Noble House Maciae, who so generously donated their property to her for the express privilege of working in their sweatshop, plus interest of course, which would naturally have to be paid in the form of continued labor.

Real work was hard to come by in New Babel, especially for itinerant travelers like her. Sure, people always had odd jobs for wandering strangers, but you couldn’t rely on them. They paid wandering stranger money. Plus there’s only so many roof tiles you can repair, or skin farms you can disinfect, or abandoned bone wasp nests you can clear. Honest work sure, but she had a stomach to fill. 

The next big step up was hired muscle. All it took was one ask at the first bar she found. Someone always needed a thug. This was a gamble. Sometimes all she had to do was stand around and looking intimidating, which the Student was admittedly fantastic at. Glowing Swamp natives like her were rare that far west, and she found a perverse glee in the fact that some denizens of Isin regarded her like some sort of feral eye-stealing huntress-witch. Other times however, she would end up having to scare the daylights out of some poor shopkeep, or rough up some other ash-sucking city lowlife. It didn’t sit well with her. The main problem was if you stick around beating on salt-scummers too long you inevitably get involved with the local criminal element. Not just neighborhood gangs either. The scary ones. The organized ones. That was a lesson that cost her a lung. 

If you knew a trade, most cities had a guild chapter who would set you up with a workshop and some customers. The cities always needed tradehands. Hell, the cities fought wars over tradehands. But she wasn’t a tradehand. Sure she had some modest skill with repairing metal things, both grey and gold, but not enough to set up a shop. She was one hell of a synthetimancer, but Isisnites seemed to mistrust this strange foreign magic. At best they saw it as a novelty. A witch doctor with shifting skin of spines who could slowly heal wounds with her touch and conjure small flames with a snap of the fingers. A carnival sideshow. At worst, it was frightening heretical magic to be kept hidden from the nuns that patrolled the streets. Either way, nothing close to a proper trade. 

That left the factories. People who sing the cities praises always say “There are no prisons in Isin!” The factories are why. Every poor soul there had a debt to work off. Sometimes it was the punishment for a crime, sometimes it was just a desperate body who needed the money. Regardless, as the countless sixteen-hour days started to blend together, as sleep became a numb, dry, slog, everyone began to realize that the numbers we’rent adding up. That the wage was too low, and the interest was too high. That the IV drips that kept you awake during the day were too expensive, and the endorphin injections that let you sleep (all conveniently sold at the company store for just a small portion of your wage) were losing their strength. 

The industrial prosthetics never ached, never got tired, and let you work twice as fast. Sure they were expensive, no one worker could purchase one from the company store for cash, but they were happy to lease one to you. Of course, they would keep your original limb safe and fresh in a tank of goo somewhere and as soon as you worked off your debts they would be happy to reattach it (for a nominal fee of course), and in the meantime, they owned the prosthetic, so while you are free to leave at any time, theft of company property was taken very seriously by management. 

She was lucky to avoid the worst of it. Her experience with biomechanics, heavy and light, got her into the pit crews, the dedicated maintenance shop for the knights that made up the city garrison. They were comparatively the highest paid, and best treated slaves in the entire factory citadel, but make no mistake, they were still slaves. Many of the other crew members were veterans from other parts of the factory that had worked their way up. There was no small amount of resentment. They had worked for these “nicer” conditions, while she joined in this cushy position.

Even the prostetics they used to drag people deeper into debt were nicer. A far cry from the heavy assembly-line clamps or ultra-heavy-duty welders, the pit crew prosthetics were powerful and prescise, all fine-angle grinders and oscillating scalpels for conducting delicate biomechanical surgeries. They were ten times the price. Only the best for the city garrison. Sure, they didn’t cripple her with debt and slowly replace parts of her body until she was nothing but a brain soaked in compliance hormones connected to a body that was just a massive walking assembly line, but the days were endless, the work was soaked in suffering and gore, and she was a slave. 

When the engine of calamity attacked, she wasn’t the only one that escaped, but she was the only one that sunk a hatchet into the back of the foreman’s neck. 

The memory felt dreamlike. The whole building shook. The lights kept going out. There was a rhythm to it. One, two, crash, one, two, three, blink. The unconscious knight on her table had been brought in for repairs, and had a hatchet hanging off their belt. The one weapon she truly knew how to use. 

By long tradition her people were hunters. She was not. She was a trapper. Not because she lacked the patience or the skill, but because a rope trap was soft, a bait cage kept the quarry fed until she could end it the right way. A single blow to the back of the neck, right beneath the cerebellum. No pain. No suffering. No sound. Just eight steps across a darkened shop floor.

The chaos covered her escape as she slipped into the crowd and fled through the main gate as the city burned behind her. 

A sewage ditch provided refuge for the night, working by what faint bio-luminescence she could conjure in her exhausted state, using a bag of stolen tools to remove the tracking chip in her arm. 

By morning, the city guns had gone silent. Whether they had won or lost, she didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Her home was gone, and house Maciae would kill her, or worse, if she showed her face in any of the cities. 

Through the grate in the cistern, she gazed upwards at the amber sky. She had heard the stories. The whispers about the stone forest far to the west. The hushed rumors about the ancient unconquered citadels of the old gods. 

It was two weeks travel past the horizon, but even from this distance could see its mark upon the world.

Even from this distance, Teleth Thadeyn left a wake in the sky.


	29. The Shaft Diver

The main problem with the apocalypse is that it was boring.

Not like how a bad date, or a prison cell is boring. The apocalypse was boring like how a dead end job was boring. It was that quiet, creeping, sort of boring that suffocated you over decades, choking you so gently with routine and mind-numbing meaningless struggle, that by the time it finally squeezes its boring little fingers around you neck you’re so numb to the sensation you don’t even feel it. 

So Kali became a shaft diver. 

The citadels of the old gods were a treasure trove of strange creatures and lost technology. A single expedition could be worth a kingdom, but it needed finesse. Plundering armies would be noticed. Hell, a group of more than ten or twelve would be noticed, and when it came to the city defenses “annihilated” was an understatement. To get in, you needed to be alone. It was ludicrously dangerous, legendarily difficult, and had no employer benefits, but it offered something truly rare, something she never found in all her time as a knight, a mercenary, or a bandit. It offered adventure. 

So here she stood, at the gaping maw of an ancient abandoned cargo shaft. Teleth Thadeyn was built so tall it tore a wake in the sky, but as high as the old megacities were built, nobody really knew how deep they tunneled into the earth. But Kali was one of the brave-slash-idiotic-slash-suicidal few that aimed to find out. 

She was an impressive sight, but average for her strain. Six foot four and nearly two hundred and sixty pounds of rippling muscle. Most of her skin was the deep mahogany common to her people, but around her hands and arms it faded into the thick, stony grey of natural biological armor. The result of a lifetime of rough work, but just beneath the surface all of it was the spiderweb of bright blue veins characteristic of her strain. Under her helmet, her features were round and soft, except for the horns.

Bolted to her back was her pride and joy. An 800 series SR&R Pauldron Multi-Purpose Heavy Industrial Work Rig. Nearly 140 pounds of hydraulics and fortified steel effortlessly sat on her shoulders as if it were a sweater. With the diagnostics complete, she stood. She raised her arms, and took a deep breath. The electric motors thrummed to life like a lion waking from a deep sleep, hydraulic actions hissed as they fired, snapping into position and bolting themselves into the rivets on her reinforced skeleton. All signs green. 

She slotted her hands into a pair of tool gauntlets, and flexed her fingers experimentally. The huge, mechanical fingers perfectly mimicked every movement. The sudden addition to her nervous system didn’t even phase her anymore. No nausea, no shock, no disorientation. It was like slipping on a worn pair of tailored gloves if those gloves were made of a depleted uranium alloy. 

Preparations for the dive were nearly complete. Her excitement almost overpowered the routine of her re-jump checklist. Almost. The line was a biosynthetic carbide cable braid that could self-repair in the event of a break, and was anchored around one of the huge carbonsteel support pillars that held the city up. About as safe as safe could be.

Almost time. 

She took a deep breath. The air was cool and dry. The world was still. 

She balled her hands into fists and slammed them together with a resonant CLANG. The sound echoed like the toll of a church bell through the ancient metal of the shaft mouth. It thundered deep, deep into the forgotten recesses of the impossible city, rebounding off the walls of the shaft like a coin dropped into a dry well, echoing back with a rhythmic bass that strained against the very bottom registers of her hearing. She loved that sound. Teleth Thadeyn wasn’t so scary. She was just a little shy. If you gave her the right encouragement, she would sing to you. 

Kali couldn’t contain herself as she sprinted towards the precipice. Every neuron sang, adrenaline pounded on her heart like war drums signaling a charge. She started to laugh. Not the wavering, manic laugh of an adrenaline high, or the fragile, panicked laugh of mortal anxiety, it was the deep, rich, laugh of someone who had thrown herself wholly to the place on the map marked “here be monsters,” and knew that she could conquer all of them. It was the laugh of someone who was tremendously, gleefully, alive.


	30. The Sound of Weeping

Deep into the abandoned garbage chute, she followed the sound of weeping.

Sound travels far in the old shafts. It echoes for miles, rebounding again and again off the smooth metal walls. Most of the time the shafts were quiet. Most of the time it was just the gentle listing air and the familiar hum of the winch as it lowered her ever deeper into the cities old abandoned throats.

But sometimes there would be sounds. The patter of rain that had eaten its way through the passages above. The staccato chatter of rust-eater hives or recycler nests. Sometimes, in the very deepest places she dared to travel, the places so deep the air was thin and her floodlights faint, she would hear things she could swear were thunderous footsteps, or the grinding slithering sounds of what she imagined to be some great serpentine body dragging itself through the lightness warrens of the earth.

Weeping was a new one.

When she found him, he was naked. Lying curled into a ball with his face buried into the crook of his arms, taking shelter in the centuries of crusted filth that lined the walls and corridors branching off from the garbage chute. He was sobbing, and he was beautiful. Beautiful in that old-world sense, with none of the strange proportions or artificial additions that characterized every human nowadays. No, the crying boy was all plush-soft and pale, with baby blue eyes and a mop of messy brown hair that only made him look more pathetic and small curled up in that heap of ancient garbage.

The sight of him triggered something deep in Kali, some ancient maternal instinct that told her to go. To save him. To warm and feed and protect him.

But Kali was not that stupid. A naked, crying, boy? Lost in the depths of an abandoned megacity? Please. Might as well have been a cake with a cage dangling over it.

The first thing she did was swing her kinetic wrench down towards the boys skull.

Just before it connected, the change happened. It skittered away from the attack with unnatural speed, limbs bent at unnatural angles, body still twisted in that faux-vulnerable position as all 300 newtons of Kali’s swing slammed into the ground, denting it viciously.

It was still small, but as it rose to its full height on its humming gossamer wings, she watched the seams form in its face, dozens of shimmering compound eyes emerging from hidden folds in skin that rippled and hardened into smooth chitinous plates. There was another sickening pop as one of its forelimbs split and writhed into a barbed mantid scythe.

She was already following through with another strike, a horizontal swipe to swat the bug out of the air. But the thing was fast. The hum of its wings seemed a constant presence, a high, tinny buzz that seemed to drown out thought. It cleared the hammer easily and dove in for an attack, shrieking as its jaw split in six places, unfurling like some vile flower into a flurry of mandibles soaked in caustic venom.

She barely had time to grab it. She managed to nab it by the cheek, needle-sharp teeth scraping against the depleted uranium gauntlets. Her thumb pressed to the inside of its jaws as a long, barbed, tongue whipped uselessly against the thick metal. She was about to follow up, to crack the bugs head like an eggshell, when she felt a sudden pain in her gut. The thing had a stinger jutting from its arm, no doubt pumping some sort of paralytic venom into her belly.

With a shout, she wound up, and hurled the thing as far as she could, hoping the force would dislodge the stinger. It hurtled back a dozen yards or so, tumbling end over end until finally righting itself with its wings. It was angry. It shrieked at her with a horrible chattering rattling cry that made Kali wince. It was like having her eardrums pierced with tuning forks. But then it spoke, its voice that same chittering whine.

“Where have you taken her?“

“You can talk?“

“I- What? Of course I can talk. You should know I can talk.”

“I should?“

The bug wavered. Its entire demeanor had changed, posture straightening into something much more human.

“Dammit. Shit. Dammit. Dammit Dammit.“

The bug dropped from its position, wings still beating slowly. It walked on the balls of its feet, which Kali did not like.

“Whats going on here? Why can you talk?“

The bug looked at Kali as if she was a filthy but affectionate street dog.

“You’re who I’m looking for. Sorry for…trying to trap and eat you.“ It folded its wings back into its carapace.

“Uh, thanks I guess.“

“Actually. You haven’t seen them have you? Group of knights. Like you. But shorter. And less beefy. Wearing white and red?”

“Sorry. Just me.”

“Perfect.” His voice sounded more human now, and was audibly dripping with sarcasm and digestive juices. “Who are you by the way?“

“You first.“

The bug rolled hundreds of its eyes, which was impressive given its lack of pupils.

“Niccolo Moschiava, First Aesthetic“ With this, he seemed to straighten, expecting some sort of response.

“Kali. Shaft Diver.“ She held out her hand. Niccolo made no attempt to shake it.

“Niccolo Mosciava, First Aesthetic to Our Lady of the Golden Womb?” He said, sounding much more important.

“Oh! You’re like, one of those bug priests?“

“…Yes. I am one of those” He said, forming quotation marks with his forearm-scythes. “Bug priests.“

“So bug, who’re you trying to kill?“

“I-” He stopped for a moment, seemingly annoyed at being addressed as “bug.“

“I am an…assistant of sorts. I came to this godsforsaken place with my hive saint for the good lady’s pilgrimage. But we were attacked by a group of knights and separated. I am going to find those bastards and lay eggs in their hearts, then I am going to find my lady.“

“Hm. Do you know where they were headed?“

“Why should I tell you?“

“Because, little bug, I know this city. I can probably show you the way.“

“Hmph. Its an old medical research ward. We call it The Red Nest.“ At this, Kali’s eyes lit up.

“Ah! Never been myself, but I know the way! Always meant to head down there. But I’ve never had the chance. Whatcha think bug? Wanna tag along?”

“Fine. But one condition.“

“Yeah?“

“I know my full title is a mouthful, but don’t call me Bug.“

“Hmm…How about Nico?“

He seemed to ponder for a moment. As if testing out the new name. His voice softened a bit when he responded.

“Fine.“

Again, she stretched out her hand.

“Nice to meet you Nico.“

“Nice to meet you Kali.“

She had to crouch to shake his hand.


	31. He  Would Be Cherubic If It Weren't For The Mandibles

He would be cherubic if it weren’t for the mandibles.

This was the sort of thing Kali would have said if she knew what a cherub was. She did not know what a cherub was, and so she continued to sit and stare at the boy with a mixture of wordless fascination and horror as he disemboweled a live recycler. She had seen her fair share of gore, but there was something oddly mesmerizing about watching all six mandibles work in concert, conducting their grisly little orchestra.

An iridescent eye caught her staring. He paused for a moment before turning away, muttering an apology in that insectoid rasp. Kali nearly responded, but thought better of it, and elected to wait until he was finished. The fire crackled, it was low now, bathing the makeshift camp in dull orange.

“Sorry for staring. I don’t know the rules for bug priests” She reached out a hand, but nico shied away. She withdrew it. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“No, its just-” he said with a start “And I told you I’m not a priest, I’m an Aesthetic.“

“I still don’t know what that means.“

“It’s a rank in the church. Personal bodyguards and servants to the hive saints, chosen for our beauty and youth and turned into, you know, this.”

He gestured to himself and flicked open the chitin plates on his face, revealing the insectoid features concealed underneath.

“Chosen is the operative word here. I never exactly had a choice. Its been nearly two decades of this.“

The chitin that made up his skin rippled.

Kali did not really know how to respond, she was kicking herself for bringing it up. This stuff was never her strong suit. How had she not thought that maybe the bug kid didn’t want to talk about how he was a bug kid. She decided to just say what was on her mind.

“I think it looks cool.“

“Don’t.“

“Don’t what?“

“Lie to me.“

Now he was crying. Fuck.

“I’m not lying! I like the mandibles! And the wings are really pretty!“

“You don’t mean that.“

“Yes I do!“

“Don’t LIE to me!” Nico turned with a rattling hiss, mandibles extended. Kali didn’t flinch, meeting his eyes, or what looked like the two largest eyes, with a dead glare. He faltered, and quickly began to fold back into his human appearance.

“Don’t.” She said, something in her voice halted Nico completely. “Leave them out.“ There was a long pause. The fire crackled. When his eyes returned to their faux-human appearance, they were looking away. He kept the mandibles out.

Kali leaned in closer with genuine wonder. Equal parts dexterous and strong, all covered in wicked spines and digestive fluid that hissed faintly when it touched the air. She reached out a hand to touch one, but paused before looking to Nico for approval. With a gentle nod, she ran a stony thumb along one of the nastier looking spikes. Razor sharp. Even through the natural armor, there was a small but visible drop of blood.

“Shorry“ He said with some difficulty, as what normally pretended to be his lips was busy being sharp.

“Woah! You can talk when your mouth is like this?“

“Shorda. I need my tongue. Here. Wash ish.“

Kali watched with that same mix of fascinated elation and mild horror as his tongue lengthened and thinned and sharpened into a needle-sharp proboscis. Her look faded to wonder as it expertly wicked the drop of blood off his mandible. Slowly he folded his face back into his human shape. With what Kali thought might have been pride, he turned his head so she could see as the odd little appendages folded themselves into a shape that almost perfectly recreated a human jaw.

“The big two on the sides hold prey in place while the four smaller ones on the top and bottom grip the soft chunks melted by the acid and feed them down my throat!“

That bit she knew. She had watched that happen.

“Speaking of, your blood tastes good. Low lipid and fat content. With…” He seemed to ponder the taste for a moment. “…lots of antioxidants and iron. Are you vegetarian?“

She laughed and nodded, opening her mouth and pulling her cheek with her finger to expose her teeth. Nico leaned in with interest before quickly catching himself, and reassuring his normal aloof affect.

“What, so its my turn now?“

She nodded. “See?“ She pulled back her upper lip to reveal a pair of thick buck teeth flanked by rows of heavy square molars that looked surprisingly similar to the stony biological armor that covered her limbs.

“My strain has a really efficient gut.“ She thumped her abs with a fist. “We eat mostly plant matter, and we can eat almost any plant matter. Wood. Leaves. Roots. You name it. We can even eat fungi if they’re not toxic.“

Nico laughed. The sound started as what a reasonable person would call cute if it didn’t immediately curl into an unnaturally high whine. In Kali’s head, normally it would have been maybe an 8/10 on the Weird and Disconcerting scale, but for values of Nico it was maybe a 2.

There were still tears in his eyes when he smiled at her. The look on his face was distant, but clearly held some gratitude he was too proud to express. She reached out to sarcastically-but-not-sarcastically wipe some away, but a word from Nico halted her outstretched thumb.

“Don’t.“ He said. Kali was about to protest but again he interrupted.

“Its stomach acid.“


	32. Canticle

The doors to the medical ward were covered in the shaft diver symbol for danger.

While Kali did come to the megacity searching for adventure, she also trusted her fellow shaft divers. The symbol itself, an inverted triangle with a cross through it, was written dozens of times over the doors in as many different hands. Stellar reviews from her compatriots. 

When Nico explained that this was “without a doubt where his hive saint was going,” Kali only had the energy for a slightly pained smile and a look she hoped came off as “I know I made a promise but if we die its your fault.” 

The express tunnel was long and smooth, banking gently off to the left in a way that made one unsure of how much progress they were making. There were unpowered mag-rails along the floor, clearly made for some sort of efficient little vehicle that the pair did not have. The lights seldom worked, and when they did, the only light provided was the dim sort that would make your eyes hurt if you tried to read by it. Their footsteps echoed as they walked.

Kali found it meditative. Nico was bored. She could hear him listing back and forth on his wings behind her, kicking off the walls like a swimmer doing laps. 

Zzzzzzzzzzz-thunk.

Zzzzzzzzzzz-thunk.

Zzzzzzzzzzz-thunk.

She considered asking him to stop, but he would probably use it as leverage to ride on her shoulder again. He was light, even for his size, but 40kg was still substantial. She decided to treat it as a test of patience. Yeah. She was training her willpower. That’s what she was doing. 

She was just about to fail her test of willpower, when the sound stopped. As she turned to throw some comment at the bug, she saw him hovering in place, transfixed by something illuminated by the dull light. 

“Did you see this?“ He said, gesturing at the wall. His voice was soft, half wonder and half apprehension. 

“The wall? Yeah Nico I saw the w-“ Then she saw it. Dull and faded, nearly invisible in the dying light, were lines upon lines of text. “Wait. Yeah. There are words.”

Nico was straining all eight-dozen of his eyes. “It looks like old Telite. Pre-reformation I think. Do you have some more light?”

She did. She flicked on her rigs work lights and moved in for a closer look. The symbols were simple and efficient, all quick strokes and right angles. Nico flitted around the wall of text, chittering to himself with apparent excitement. 

“This is amazing. As far as I can tell, its a branch dialect completely unique to this place. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Look here!“ he darted to a symbol, turning to face Kali and tapping it with the back of his finger like a teacher at a blackboard. “This is a term for scalpel, or some form of sharp doctors tool, but its conjugated like a proper, but nonspecific, noun. Its not referring to a scalpel like a tool, its referring to a group of people, Those Who Scalpel.“ 

“Like a doctor?“

“Well, no. Thats the interesting bit! Doctors are referred to separately here.“ He flitted to another word. “And here!“ He looked at Kali proudly, too excited to notice the digestive fluid dripping from his grin.

Kali nodded wisely. ”I don’t know how to read.” 

Nico deflated a bit, but pressed on. “Its a canticle. I think. A religious text. I can’t say for sure unless I read more.” 

“How much more is there?“

“Look.“

Kali aimed the gear lights down the tunnel. The lines of text continued as far as they could see. 

“We should keep moving. Can you read while we walk?“

“Yes. Yes I think so, as you keep the light on.“

They walked like this for what seemed like hours. Echoing heavy footsteps and buzzing wings. Nico hummed what sounded like church hymns as he worked. Or, maybe humming wasnt the right word, Kali thought. But singing wasn’t the right word either. Nico didn’t have lungs. The sound reminded her of the organs played by travelling circuses mixed with those odd little hand-cranked string instruments. It was an endless droning sound, with no real end or beginning, not quite harmony, but not quite discord either. It was the sort of tune you could only carry if you were only pretending to have a throat. When it stopped, Kali almost felt as if she had snapped awake from a dream.

When nico spoke, his voice was soft.

“I don’t know what to make of this.“

“Is something wrong?“

“Not really. Well, maybe. I’m not sure. It might just be my translation.“

“What do you mean?“

“The wall, it seems like the story of the Red Nest. The overarching story is the same as what I was taught, that this was the birthplace of a new god who soon outgrew their shell and left deeper into the earth, but the details are different.”

The chitin that made up his skin rippled nervously. 

“The Red Nest is sacred to us because it is the molted shell of a god, where our ancestors built the Hive of Opilion the Harvestman. He that consumes the husks of the dead to be reborn as new brood. Opilion and his host of weavers who preserve the dead in cocoons of holy silk from which they are reborn.”

At the mention of the name, nico made some gesture about himself, seemingly by reflex. Beneath the anxiety, there was something unplacable in his voice, something wistful, like he was fondly remembering something he couldnt quite place.

“It is the holiest of holy places for one of our faith to die. A pure and sacred place, far from the sinful and burning world, where death is gentle and kind for those of virtue. My hive saint is old, she wished to die in the cast off shell of Opilion, so that she may descend with him.“

Nico was quiet for a moment. Finding the words. Kali could see the shadow of doubt on his face.

“It has to be my translation.“

“What do you mean? Its just details right?“

“The wall. The wall describes a god being cast from this place. Forced deep into the earth and sealed by a group of seamstresses. They speak of the god as being hungry, of birthing strange children, who are consumed over and over again in a holy cycle. Children who worship the thing sealed in the deep places. But they don’t call it the Harvestman, or Opilion, or any of the more flowery names we have for them.“

“What do they call it?“

“Im not really sure. The word seems to be a combination of several others, I don’t think the translation really works.“

“Nico. What do they call it.“

“Again, I’m not sure, I-“

“Nico.“

“The Great Cancer. They call it the Great Cancer.“


	33. Oxygen

“Okay, who here actually breathes oxygen?” Three of the five hands raised.

“Statement: I do not breathe at all. My processor is hermetically sealed.“ Said the sorcerer.

“My body maintains perfect homeostasis at all times. I can choose to breathe oxygen if I so wish.“ Said the teacher.

A chitinous hand raised. “I breathe oxygen but I don’t have lungs.“

The student thought for a moment. “How does that work?“

“I have tiny openings all over my body called spiracles, I force oxygen through body by flexing my carapace.“

The student turned her attention to the larger newcommer. “What about you, shaft diver? Lungs? Oxygen?”

“Lungs.“ Said the shaft diver, as if she and the student were now a part of the Lungs That Breathe Oxygen Club.

The Student continued taking inventory. “Okay, okay, who here actually needs to eat?“ Four of the five hands raised. “Okay, go around the circle and say what you eat.“

“Should we say a fun fact about ourselves too?“ Interrupted Nico

“Shh.“ Said Kali with a glare. “Its not your turn yet.“

The Student motioned to the Sorcerer, who was waiting patiently.

“Statement: I do not eat per se, but I require a suitable power source every 72 hours. But I can extend that time by sleeping.“ Said the sorcerer, who gestured to the cable hooked up to the back of their head.

“I eat mostly plant matter. Vegetables, roots, wood, some fungi. No matter if they’re fresh, cooked, or rotten. My body is based on calcium and methanol. Raw meat makes me sick, but I can eat carrion and bone meal in a pinch.“ Said Kali, who had been slowly chewing a root for several hours.

“Raw meat. As an aesthetic I am entirely carnivorous, I can’t get nutrition from plants at all, and cooked meat tastes like ash. And I need adrenaline! Its an essential vitamin for me. I want my meals to be alive, afraid, and in pain when I eat them.“ Said Nico, practically draping himself upside down over the crates the group were using as chairs.

“I can eat most meat and vegetables. I prefer vegetables cooked, but can eat them raw, and need meat cooked to digest it properly. I’m a synthetimancer, so I can synthesize carbohydrates in a pinch but it takes a long time and I have to focus.“ Said the student, snapping a small flame to life with her left hand.

“Wait.“ Said Kali. “If you’re a synthetimancer, can’t you make food for other people?“

The student shook her head, and knocked on the sub-dermal armor where her breasts used to be. “If its an emergency, I will cut my palm and you can drink my blood. Trust me, it will taste better than a glass of my biosynthetically tailored sweat.“


	34. The Medical Ward

The medical ward was disconcerting in that it did not stink.

Damn near every crevice of the rotting megacity had a smell; a distinct mixture of ash, must, and acidic dry-rot that was somehow both disgustingly organic and coldly artificial. It was a smell that had a way of seeping into things, of hiding in the background until one noticed its sudden absence.

The medical ward should have reeked of death. When the travellers entered, they found themselves on the balcony of a large atrium that, according to the faded metal sign, was “Floor 0.“

They could not tell how far up or down the ward extended, as the view was obscured by a spiderweb of bridges and catwalks that had doubtless been added to speed up travel between-highly trafficked areas, but now seemed random and labyrinthine.

Suspended from the bridges, tied to the handrails, or simply knotted to the floor, were husks. From their single vantage point on the precipice of Floor 0, the travelers could see hundreds of them. Every last one of them was fixed in some strange but intentional position, bound hundreds of times with intricate braids and knots of red cord.

Kali could only stare in amazement at the sight before her. Framed directly before the balcony was a great wreath of red knotwork, a circle with its mouth aimed directly at the entrance to the medical ward, and suspended within its circumference like the symbols on the face of a clock, were what looked to be dozens of husks, all bound in positions that seemed to follow each other in sequence, as if the ring of bodies were displaying instructions for a dance.

There came a meek chittering sound from Nico. “I don’t understand.“ He said, antennae poking from his hair and sweeping wildly around the room. “This is wrong. Its just wrong.“

“What is it?“ Kali could tell he was on edge, but didn’t want to interrupt whatever he was doing with his antennae.

“Can you smell it?” Nico waved his hand through the air. Kali took a deep breath. At the very edges of her senses she noticed something. It wasn’t very strong, but it was something. “Hang on,“ she said “yeah, it smells kinda like…oranges?“

“Citric acid.“ explained Nico. “Its one of the major components in the holy pheromones used by the order of Opilion.“ He looked around in wonder. “This place is soaked in them. But there’s something wrong. Its like whoever consecrated this place was using a different formula.“

“What about that?“ Kali said, pointing to the wreath of bodies.

“Its the Wheel of Life, a symbol our faith used to use. Each pose represents an individual stage in the cycle of reincarnation. But…again, its wrong.“

“Explain.“

“The wheel is only supposed to have twelve positions. See you start at the top, the one with both arms raised, that’s birth. Directly opposite is supposed to be death, the one with the arms and legs crossed and the head bowed. Half the wheel is life, half the wheel is death. But this one added six more symbols after death that I don’t recognize.“

“What does that mean?“

“I have no idea.“

—

The deeper into the medical ward they progressed, the more numerous the husks became.

At first it was only stray bodyparts. A finger, a hand, the occasional eye or ear. But then it progressed to entire limbs, whole legs or arms that pulled themselves along the deeper corridors with weak spasmatic motions. Eventually there were whole pairs of legs that hobbled past with an odd high-balanced gait, as if compensating for a torso that was simply not there, or whole torsos that attempted to grasp weakly at anything that passed by in an attempt to move along the smooth corridors.

Every so often they would find another collection of parts bound in red cord, always arranged with careful intent, though the meaning of the arrangements remained a mystery to the travelers. 

“Ah!“ Kali exclaimed suddenly, starting Nico half to death.

“By the brood that scared me half to death.“ He mumbled, “what is it?“

“I remember what these husks remind me of!“ She said, nudging a disembodied leg with her foot. Nico stared at her expectantly.

“Carrion! Theres nothing biological or synthetic on them at all. They’ve been picked clean.“

Nico bent down to pick up an errant foot. “Huh.“ He said, turning it over in his hands, antennae twitching. “You’re right. They smell faintly like they used to be covered in that old kind of silicate skin.” He paused for a moment, thinking.

“What eats silicate skin?“

Kali shrugged, her rig hydraulics hissed. “Dunno. Some kinda silicate vulture?“

Nico gave her a flat look. 

“You’re sure your priestess came this way?“ Her tone was a shade more serious.

Nico nodded.


	35. Abomination

The trap was set at the entrance to a collapsed atrium.

This was one of the oldest parts of the medical ward, and over time several floors above had collapsed leaving a large pile of rubble where there had previously been offices. It blocked the line of sight to what should have been a large open space.

As soon as the pair crossed the threshold, the trap was sprung. Nico doubled over in pain as his nervous system went haywire, muscles attempting to writhe while the chitin of his skin attempted to press themselves closer. Kali heard her teeth squeak as her jaw snapped shut, every muscle in her body firing at once. She toppled over as her work rig snapped into its default position, the HUD warped and distorted, displaying garbled information and scrambled images. The muscles in her eyes wouldn’t let her focus, but she had seen this before. She was being enthralled. Whoever was doing this, they had a sorcerer.

Everything went black.

Kali dreamed of when she was small. She dreamed about the caravans and asphodel. Nobody would rightly call her childhood pleasant, but it was a rarity in that it was a childhood. By the time she was six she was expected to help her clan. She wasn’t smart enough to be a commander, and wasn’t careful enough to be a smith, so she was a mechanic. It was impossible work for a child, but she was strong. The days were endless, spent carrying heavy tires and scavenging for scrap. It was monotony broken only by the rare tuft of sour grass. She dreamed of the clear nights. The nights when the rain stopped. She could sleep on the roof of the caravan and watch the thunderstorms dance off the mountains to the west.

–

When she awoke, she was bolted to the floor. She was blindfolded. Her mouth was full of cud, and judging by the amount, it had been several hours. “Don’t panic.“ she thought. “Pretend to be unconscious. Gather information.“ She told herself. This did not work. Upon realizing her situation, she thrashed against her bonds. “Bastards” She lowed, the word roaring drunkenly out her. She was bound in a kneeling position, with her arms splayed behind her, but she felt heavy. Her work rig was bolted to her skeleton, but it had gone completely dead. Whoever enthralled them must also have drained the battery. The gauntlets on their own weighed over 20kg on their own, all they were now was another shackle. Even so, she twisted and strained against the chains, spitting increasingly coherent curses.

She screamed and screamed for what felt like hours, and had just about shouted herself hoarse when she heard the sound of footsteps. They were metal, brisk and regimented, but surprisingly light.

This sparked a new torrent of threats, but then the voice spoke. “It is okay. We are not going to hurt you.“ It was low and modulated, but sounded oddly soft. “I would like to talk to you. I am going to remove your blindfold.“ Kali warily stiffened as a smooth metal hand pulled the loop of cloth off her eyes. It stuck one of her horns. “Apologies“ Said the voice, who Kali now saw belonged to a knight. The armor was nice. Not top of the line, maybe a generation old, and clearly used. It was a middleweight, equal parts defense and flexibility. More importantly, it was painted red and white. Her eyes were drawn to the tabbard of intricate symbols that hung from the knights neck that denoted them as members of some holy order. Behind him was what appeared to be temporary camp. Maybe a dozen or so knights were milling about around what appeared to be a campfire. The large tents they erected among the rubble obscured most of their goings on.

The knight squatted in front of her and slid up the faceguard on their helmet, revealing pale face, a pair of black, pupil-less eyes, and a set of heavy buck teeth. A Khulari.

“Let me go, rat.“ Kali growled. The knight was unimpressed. “That isn’t up to me.” Kali felt her teeth grind together. “So why are we talking?“ The knight stood, adjusting the stole around his neck and draping it over his hand so it hung like a scroll before Kali.

“I can’t read you pest.“

The knight sighed, and snapped his helmet into place. His modulated voice spoke in a rehearsed, important, cadence: “Three days and two nights meditation shall transgressors in mercy be given. Swallow thy sins, so sayeth he who speaks as my holy mouthpiece, repent and be saved. So do we hail.“

The knight changed to their previous tone. “You have been tricked, and because of that, you have dealt with the heathen beast gods and their abominations. But do not be afraid! In god’s mercy you have a chance to repent.“

He drew a small dagger from his breastplate, and placed it on the stone in front of Kali. It was a tiny thing, clearly blunt except for the point. It was barely a letter opener.

“Kill the bug and rid the world of an abomination, or we kill you both and rid the world of two. So do we hail.“ He nodded to someone Kali couldn’t see.

A pair of knights came in to view carrying a long piece of rebar, welded into what could have been a simple gallows. They stopped, and spiked it into the earth as to be in Kali’s direct line of vision. Hanging upside down from it, bound at the ankles, wrists, and waist with heavy metal cord, was Nico. He was unconscious and badly injured. Chitin plates hung at sickening angles, and his hair was soaked in the pale yellow-green ichor that made up his blood, where it mixed with the stomach-acid drool that dripped from his open mouth.

There was that rage again. It welled and churned and boiled like the great poisoned sea. It started in her stomach and roared into her bones, but then, suddenly, as quickly as it had come, it drained away. Every drop of rage was sucked from her mind as Kali heard a sound from the broken figure. Nico was alive.

“I’m…sorry…“ His voice was slurred. It looked like part of his jaw was broken.

“Don’t talk. Its not your fault…Its not your fault.“

“You’re not going to kill me…aren’t you?“ What almost could have passed for a rueful smirk passed over Nico’s face.

“I’ll…I’ll figure something out. I’ll figure something out.“

“That would…be…nice…be…nice…“ Nico trailed off, slipping into unconsciousness again. 

—

A day passed. The knights gave her water and table scraps. They gave Nico nothing. They asked if she would repent. She said no.

—

A day passed. The knights tried prodding Nico with their weapons for entertainment. He was not lucid enough to be interesting. They quickly grew bored. They asked if she would repent. She said no.

Night fell. Kali’s mind was a haze. She spent every moment watching the motion of Nico’s chest. The only thing that snapped her out of it was when Nico spoke. There was something different. Something in his eyes. Something panicked and feral.

“Kali?…Kali?…Are you there?..”

“Nico?…Im here Nico. Im here.”

“I’m so…hungry…“

“I know Nico, when we get out I’ll-“

“Listen…I’m…swarming…I might…hurt you…“

“Nico I-“

“Kill me…before…I do…“

—

Kali tried to think. She really did. She tried to think of anything clever she could have done to save him. She was never good at things like this. She tried to remember all the stories she heard. The ones about trickster gods who used their wits to escape situations like this. They didn’t help.

There was that rage again. But this time, she was exhausted. She was hungry and thirsty. The knights cut Nico from the cord he fell onto the hard ground with a clattering thud. Her stomach sank as the knight drew a long and heavy blade. Again, she struggled against the shackles. A few of them gathered, circled around the pair of them chanting some nonsense she couldn’t understand. She hated it. She hated them. She strained and strained against the shackles. She hated herself. She let this happen. She was weak and they were strong.

The knight with the heavy blade moved to her. Still, her eyes were fixed on the motion of Nico’s breathing. Every muscle in her body screamed against her shackles, against the dead weight of her work rig.

The knight raised his blade.

If she wasn’t watching, she would have missed it. The gentle motion of Nico’s mouth twitched to make a single word.

“Ka…li…“

Everything went red.

There was a tremendous cracking sound as the concrete slab Kali was bolted to creaked and splintered. With a single, impossible, motion, Kali stood up. The effort ripped huge chunks of stone from the concrete, still bolted to the shackles around her wrists and ankles. A lifetime of training took over. Without thinking, she continued the motion into a blow, directed squarely at her executioners stomach.

It split him in half.

She was delirious, in pain, and hungry. None of that mattered. She was rage.

—

When she came down, she found herself kneeling on the chest of what used to be the Khulari knight. It was difficult to tell. Everything from its lungs up was an unrecognizable bloody pulp.

As the world came in to focus, she felt the weight of her dead work rig. With the last of her strength, she searched the mess for a battery. Her head spun as the HUD sprung to life, the cheery music of the boot sequence were nails on the chalkboard of her ears. The hydraulics hissed to life and the weight on her shoulders was lifted as the rig suddenly began to support itself again. It only made her feel tired. She had one last thing to do.

She found a bucket of water, and a rag. She soaked the rag in blood, and then stood to survey her handiwork. She was in luck. She had managed to only almost kill one of the knights, brave thing was still holding on. Their eyes blearily tracked Kali as she hoisted their limp frame up onto her shoulder, and walked to the gallows where Nico was still lying. He was still breathing. She cut the wires with a stray sword, stood back, dropped the knight, and then threw the bucket of water over Nico.

His form writhed into motion, flitting and jerking experimentally as he probed the air. His eyes were wild, twitching and nervous, completely devoid of any intelligence that could be reasoned with. They zeroed in on Kali. She was ready.

With speed that could only have been driven by desperation and hunger, the feral Nico hissed and flung himself at Kali. But she was ready. She caught him by the mouth, her thumb on the inside of his jaws, and just like last time, she wound up, and tossed him at the injured knight. She watched him devour what was left of the knight, expression blank.

His pace slowed as he ate. His eyes became more aware, more focused. After he had his fill, he practically collapsed on top of the pile of metal and bone. As he slowly made his way back into lucidity, he peered around the room, his affect gradually gaining intelligence, but also confusion. Until he saw the person standing over him.

“Kali?..“ He said, voice distant and eyes bleary.

“Im here Nico. I’m here.“

“Nico…thats…me…I…“ His voice trailed off again. “I didn’t hurt you did I?“

“No Nico, you didn’t hurt me. Its okay now, we’re safe.“


	36. Meeting

“I don’t think they’ve noticed us. Take out the sorcerer first.”

“Its just an unarmored data-miner so it should go down quick. I don’t recognize the tall one, but the shorter one with the missing arm is from the glowing swamp, they’re immune to neurotoxins so my stinger won’t work on them.“

“Got it.“ Said Kali, nodding. “Robot first, then the short one. You’ll take the tall one.“

—

When the sorcerer spoke, their volume was turned so low as to be almost inaudible. “Statement: There are two brainwave signatures in the rafters above us. One is armored. They are likely going to drop and attack when we pass under them.“

The student responded, also in a whisper. “Play it cool. They’re probably going to go for you first, Sorcerer. Miss?“

“I understand.“ whispered the teacher.

—

“Now!“

Kali dropped, kinetic wrench poised, head whirring with energy as she plunged directly towards the sorcerer. With only bare inches between the sorcerer and the steel-pulverizing force of the wrench, the trio exploded into action.

The teacher snatched her mechanical companion from the jaws of death and hurled them away sending them scraping along the metal floor to undignified safety. As she turned, fingers crackling with violet fire for a counterattack, she expected to be facing the armored attacker, but their back was turned. Instead, she found herself face-to-face with Nico. The boy landed with impressive grace, using his wings to cushion the fall. With a single practiced motion, he tucked, rolled, and leapt out of his clothing fully transformed.

When the initial impact happened, the student was prepared. She was lucky, heavy and medium grade armors were usually hermetically sealed, or came with a fire-retardant undersuit, but her opponent was using a work rig. She knew work rigs. They were sturdy as hell, almost invulnerable to physical damage, but they had a major weakness. She sent the sebaceous glands on her left arm into overdrive. Triglycerides, cholesterol, fatty acids, and an extra ingredient, butane. These work rigs were vulnerable to heat, and she had a forearm full of highly flammable oil. Her opponents weapon was still stuck in the ground from the force of impact. She had an opening. The student levied her arm and flexed.

The teacher was fast, but Nico was built for speed. Before the teacher could even react, he was on her. Both of his arm scythes dug into her rubbery flesh as they clamped down on her shoulders. All four stinger-tipped legs wrapped around her waist and thighs, pinning the teacher to the floor as they pumped her full of paralytic neurotoxin. Nico could feel her movements slowing, but he was injecting her with enough toxin to paralyze whale. “What the fuck?” he thought, this weird grey lady should have been dead but she was still trying to pry him off. He unfolded his jaws and bit the woman’s face, mandibles sinking into her weird rubbery skin. “Fine.“ He thought, “Ill liquefy her brain myself“ and forced his tongue-proboscis into her mouth. probing for a sinus passage. But all he found was…cytoplasm? “What the fuck?“ He thought. “Where the fuck are her organs?“ He noticed his tongue starting to burn, the cytoplasm suddenly tasted very different. “What the fuck? Is she digesting me?” He recoiled his tongue. It didn’t matter. He could feel her movements slowing. He just had to poison her faster than she could do…whatever it was she was doing. It was only a matter of time.

The student did not, however, expect the huge woman to abandon her weapon entirely, and punch her square in the sternum. There was a sound like chunk of depleted uranium hitting a plate of ground steel as the depleted uranium gauntlet hit the plate of ground steel in the students chest. The force sent her flying. She could feel the metal vibrating under her skin as she tried to cough up some blood. The room spun. She barely had time to react as the woman lept towards her, both fists arcing over her head and slamming into the space inches from where she was just laying. She was too slow. The next attack would catch her.

Kali caught her with a tackle. The weight difference was enormous and her one-armed opponent was off balance. She pinned her to the ground, using one hand to immobilize the biosynthetic arm, and a knee to keep her in place.

“Nico! I got one-“ But the words hit a traffic jam in her throat as her arms and legs were wrenched out of position. She could feel something trying to hijack the neural link. “Shit.” She thought, “I forgot the sorcerer.” Her body strained and her mind raced as she tried to regain control. It was a stalemate. It couldn’t overpower her, but she couldn’t resist it enough to move. It came down, she realized, to whoever could keep this up longer.

The student broke the stalemate by pressing her hatchet up to Kali’s throat. “Can the bug talk or is it your pet?“

“He talks.“ Spat Kali.

“Hey bug!” She shouted. “Let my teacher go or I bleed your friends throat.“

Nico responded with a chattering hiss that, although she would never admit it, made the student shiver. “Let Kali go or I turn your teacher’s blood to sludge.“

“Statement: We appear to be at an impasse. What are your demands?“ Said the sorcerer.

“Tell us where you’ve taken Her Holiness.“

“We don’t know what you’re talking about.“

“Don’t lie! The Altas Gladius attacked us with a sorcerer, and you’re the only one here with a sorcery relay.“

The teacher spoke, but her words were choked and distant. “Initiate…anointment…“

Nico, hit with sudden realization, appeared to taste the air around the teacher. he stared at her quizzically.

“What did she say?“ Asked the Student and Kali simultaneously.

Nico spoke again, but his voice was softer. “When the Altas Gladius work with mercenaries, they perform a short initiation ritual involving oil and incense. If you were working with them, I would be able to smell it on her skin.“

He paused to stare at the teacher again.

“You are not the people we are looking for. I am going to let your teacher go now.“

Slowly, he removed his stingers from the teachers abdomen and sides. The student watched in fascination as the chitin folded back in on itself to make a convincing human. She mirrored his movements, slowly retracting the hatchet as the Sorcerer relinquished control bit by bit.

“Miss!“ Shouted the student. “Are you okay?“

The Teacher made a gesture that, after a moment, the Student realized was supposed to be a thumbs-up. It looked odd with only three fingers.

“What about you?“ Asked Kali, “I hit your rig pretty hard, I can repair it if you like. My way of apologizing for trying to turn you into meat jelly.“

“Oh…well thank you. I mean, I really appreciate that, but im not wearing a rig.“

Kali blinked. “What? Then what was that metal sound?”

“Subdermal bulletproofing. If you hit me anywhere else I probably would have died. Oh… uh… sorry for trying to burn you alive I guess?”

There was a hiss as Kali withdrew her hand from her rig gauntlet and sheepishly extended it towards the Student.

“Kali.“ She said, “Shaft Diver.“

“Student.“ she took her hand, “Student.“

The moment was interrupted by a shrill insectoid voice. “Kali!“ Said Nico, practically draping himself over Kali’s shoulders, “I’m hungry.“


	37. Uninhabited

“Uninhabited she said!“ Shouted the Student, as she hurled another fireball at another six-armed husk-thing.

“Sterile as bleach she said!“

“It was when I was last here! I do not consider myself wrong!“ Retorted the Teacher as she turned another husk into slag with a gout of violet flame.

“STATEMENT: Please try to deal as little damage to the bodies as possible. They contain many useful parts.“ Said the Sorcerer from atop the shoulders of the husk they were puppeteering.

“I don’t have enough arms to be delicate right now!“ Shouted the student, as she used her augmented shins to crush the mechanical joints on a downed husk.

“Focus!“ Hissed Nico, who was really just trying to avoid taking a stray swing from Kali, who seemed to be In The Zone.

The tide of strange husks did not show any signs of letting up. With another stamp of her boot, the student hammered another mechanical joint out of its socket. She took a moment to look over the husk she had just disabled. The poor thing was just a mechanical skeleton at this point, an assembly of bare medical prosthetics picked clean of any synthetic musculature or skin. She watched it struggle against the dead weight of its six arms, twisting meekly like a dying insect. The sterile medical plastic skull clattered against the dusty linoleum as it shifted, its eyes featureless white orbs. The factory defaults.

And they just kept coming. It seemed like for every husk she downed, two more ambled into view. Shuffling towards anything that moved with that rolling top-heavy gait as if they were constantly on the verge of losing their balance. Something was wrong. Husks shouldn’t be aggressive, but they just kept coming. They also shouldn’t have six arms. Someone or something was making them hostile, but finding out why would have to wait. She needed a plan.

“I have a plan!“ Shouted the student.

“Sorcerer! Get behind me! Puppet as many as you can and have them block the doorway! We have to force them into a choke point!“

“ACKNOWLEDGED.”

“Miss! Youre with me! Just keep firing into the doorway!“

“Understood!“

“Nico! If any of them make it through, keep them occupied so Kali can clean up!“

Nico shot her a glare. “What!? So I’m bait!?“ Kali responded with a thumbs up.

“You’re the fastest, they wont be able to touch you! Just do it!“

It worked well. Surprisingly well. The entrance to the abandoned surgery floor slowly turned into a puddle of softly glowing molten metal and warped body parts. Eventually the approaching husks were unable to enter the room without attempting to climb over the mound of smouldering metal, and doing so only caused their bodies to fuse onto the pile, body after body forming a living barricade of warped synthetic limbs. The room was thick with the smell of burnt aluminum and silicon.

“PROBE COMPLETE: STATEMENT: There are zero (0) functioning husks in the immediate area.“

There was a collective sigh of relief.

“REQUEST: Please collect as many undamaged parts as possible, specifically batteries and processors, I am in need of repairs. I will perform a diagnostic to determine more information.“

Kali looked around sheepishly at the mess of twisted metal that was her handiwork, unsure of what was still useful, as Nico let out an exasperated groan and sunk to a sitting position. The student stood and made a conciliatory “I’ll handle this“ gesture.

—

The group sat together busying themselves with rations and repairs, the sorcerer was sitting in the center of a circle of carefully arranged bodyparts, all run through with various cables and wires. The rest of the group watched with idle fascination as their cooling fan hummed with exertion of powering through what information they could salvage from the destroyed husks.

The student and the teacher had seen them do this before, they explained that the process took a few hours, and advised the rest of the group to get comfortable. However, after only a few minutes, the sorcerer spoke up.

“DIAGNOSTIC COMPLETE“ The rest of the group regarded them quizzically, except for Nico who was asleep.

“QUERY: Teacher, where did you say the prosthesis bay was?“

“It should be roughly three floors below us. Why?“

“STATEMENT: The diagnostic completed quickly because these husks were only born a few hours ago. Their location history states that they were born in a location three floors below where we are currently located.“

“Ah.” She laced her fingers together. “I see.“


	38. Catenulata

The basement of the medical ward had a hole in the floor.

More accurately, it had many holes in the floor. Otherwise it was a perfectly ordinary basement by the standards of an abandoned megacity. It was a morgue. A cavernous warehouse of a space filled with utilitarian metal shelves built to some highly-optimized specification deemed ideal for temporarily storing bodies, each row was capped off with a station that held folding gurneys and an emergency chemical wash. Regularly spaced among the shelves were hallways leading to an array of individual surgery theaters and offices, each plainly labeled with sturdy plastic signs that most of the party could not read. The lights worked here. It was a small comfort. No matter their size morgues are not inviting places, especially abandoned ones.

However, even through the dust and disrepair this place had a sense of a quiet dignity. Even now a body was a precious thing, though perhaps for different reasons, and here they would have been handled with the respect they deserved.

The ceiling of the morgue was a lattice of pneumatic tubes and body chutes which terminated regularly at the hallway intersections into “receiving stations” that would deposit cadavers directly onto a waiting gurney.

This is where the holes in the floor were.

At what seemed to be random intervals, the speaker system would croak out what was once was a polite little tone that signaled the arrival of a cadaver to be processed. The speakers degraded over time, and the sound came out sounding more like a distant storm siren.

Once, one of the tones was followed almost immediately by a hissing sound as the body passed directly over the parties head. They rushed to follow it to the nearest terminal, hoping to learn more about what exactly was happening. They weren’t fast enough to catch it, and could only watch as it tumbled into the darkness below. Kali made a motion to stay quiet. There was no sound of impact.

The sorcerer guided them to the far end of the floor, down a series of unassuming hallways, to an unassuming door, that by the teachers account, should not have been there at all.

“This shouldn’t be here at all.“ She said, craning her neck to inspect the utterly normal-looking door.

Nico, however, if he was able to sweat, would have been sweating, as his attention was locked on the massive, intricate fan of red cord woven with strange designs that framed the door.

Kali was standing next to him, arms folded, and glaring. She knew the red cord has something to do with Nico’s weird bug religion, but she was more concerned with the myriad of shaft diver “danger” symbols painted in half a dozen hands and colors around the door. She said nothing.

The student, who didn’t know what any of these things meant but was able to pick up on how nervous her companions were, thought it was about time to call for a Strategy Huddle.

She was unable to do so, as the sorcerer simply opened the doors and began walking down the steps.

“Statement: The stairwell is unoccupied, please follow me.“

—

“I thought you said the husks were born three floors down.“ Said the student, rubbing her eyes. The stairwell was dark. The only light was the teachers scarlet flame. Kali had tried her rig lights, but they were nearly blinding in the enclosed space.

“We’re about twelve floors deep right now.“ Said Kali, who didn’t want to pass up a chance to show how good her sense of elevation was. The noise slightly disturbed Nico, who Kali seemed to be wearing like a sweater around her neck.

“Statement: It appears as if their diagnostic history begins at the top of this stairwell. I believe whatever made those husks lies at the bottom.“

“What makes you so sure?” Asked the teacher, twisting her neck 180 degrees to speak directly to her companion.

“Statement: There is a large cloaked area at the bottom of this stairwell. Something is jamming my ability to probe.”

Hearing this, Nico perked up. “Wait. So its mechanical?”

“Confirmation: The quality and scope of the cloaking spell is beyond what a biological mind could perform unaided.“

“So whatever it is, its a sorcerer?“ asked Kali.

“Confirmation: Likely so. Reassurance: The modifications I made to your rig firmware should make you more resistant to puppetry spells.“

“How resistant?“ Kali flexed the fingers on her rig.

“Statement: I was able to increase your resistance by 91.343%“

“Oh.“

“Nico, Ive been meaning to ask“ said the student, “what was with all the red cord? Miss explained to me that it was a religious thing, but when you saw all that stuff on the door you damn near went into a trance.“

“The design made whats called a liminus. They represent the boundary between the physical and the spiritual. The specific designs tell you what sort of place the space beyond is. Whether its a holy or a forbidden place, what sort of people can or cant enter, and what sort of things are on the other side.“

“So what sorta place is this stairway?“

“I’m getting to it! Thats the thing! Half the designs I didn’t even recognize! They use imagery I recognize but the symbolism was weird, nothing seemed to mean what it was supposed to mean.“

“So you don’t know?“

“Well…no, not really. But as far as I could tell, the liminus marked the entrance to the land of the dead.“

“Of course it did.“

“But that’s not the weird part. Thats what the Red Nest is supposed to be. But its a secondary holy site to my faith. Important absolutely, but the liminus used symbols that are only used for the innermost spawning pools at the heart of the Chattering Cathedral. It described this stairwell as the entrance to the holiest of holy places. If the liminus made sense, I wouldn’t even be allowed in here without express permission from my Hive Saint.“

“Anything else?“

“Oh it said ritual sacrifices are allowed.“

“Great.“ Said the student. “Just perfect.“ Normally, nico would have taken offense to her tone, but both of them were nervous.

“Statement: We have arrived.“

The stairway ended at short, but equally dark, hallway, which itself ended with a pair of closed double doors. The doors had windows. They were blacked out.

When the sorcerer spoke, their volume was low. “Statement: There is a trace on the doors, however I can mask our presence. Whatever lies beyond will be limited to its own audiovisual senses. Please put out your lights and move quietly.“

“I’ll go first.“ whispered the student, glad to finally have her Strategy Huddle, “I’m stealthiest, and my eyes are best in the dark. Nico, you’re with me, as soon as it notices us, I need you to get its attention. Miss, as soon as Nico gives you a good shot, turn it to slag. Kali, smash anything that gets close to sorcerer.“

There were nods of silent agreement. With hatchet in hand, the student slowly shouldered open the door.

A large empty room, pitch black save for an island of meek light at the far wall, cast by the tiny indicator lights of what appeared to be an assortment of medical machinery scavenged from the floors above. Silhouetted vaguely among their faint and distant lights was…something. The student could not tell what it was. Distance was hard to judge. It seemed to not have noticed them, for now at least. Whatever it was, it was in a flurry of movement. Even at this distance the frantic whirring of mechanical joints could be heard.

As she inched closer, her eyes locked on the thing at the far end of the room, she felt her foot tap something. It was soft, and small, and thin. The contact was subtle, only having just barely touched it, but the moment she did, the thing at the other end of the room stopped. It just stopped. The frenetic chorus of movement halted completely. The room was quiet. It was listening.

And then it vanished.

The students heart was racing. Had it spotted them? Was it fleeing? Her instincts were locked between fight or freeze. Perhaps it was the adrenaline spike, but as her heart was pounding, her vision came a bit more into focus. She got a better look at the thing she tapped with her foot.

It was a length of taut scarlet cord. 

“Above us!“ She shouted. “Lights! Now!“

There was an electrical Thunk as Kali’s rig lights lit up the room. The group was blinded, only for a moment, but in the split second before they got a flash image of the room.

Above them was a literal spiders web of red cord from which hundreds of bodies and bodyparts were suspended. It was a dizzying, seemingly random array of anatomies and positions, arranged by some incomprehensible logic by the thing that was now balanced carefully on the cords only feet above their heads.

It was humanoid. Vaguely. It was as if someone had constructed huge sculpture of a person out of old recycled medical prostheses. Bands of braided limbs attached in strange disparate ways, with legs supporting shoulders or jaws where knuckles should be. A strange prehensile neck that bore a “head“ with dozens of plastic faces, pale and expressionless. Six huge surgical armatures had been modified to serve as its arms.

It crashed to the ground where the group was just standing. The thing was slow and the party cleared it easily. The student thought if it preferred ambush, it might not have the staying power for a face-to-face fight.

She barely had time to think as its arms flew into motion. The modified armatures moved with a speed and precision that did not match its horrific appearance. The party barely had a second to watch as it deftly snagged stray bodyparts in reach, and assembled them into another of the strange six-armed husks. Then it made another. Then another. And another.

They needed a new plan.


	39. Armature

“Clear a path!”

Kali bellowed over the tide of shuffling prosthetic limbs surging towards her and her friends.

There were so many of them. She didn’t even have enough time to charge her kinetic wrench. Her rig fists were more than enough to smash the frail things in the meantime, but she couldn’t do this forever.

“I just need one clear shot!”

“Miss! Help Kali, I can handle myself here for now!“

Kali was focused on the huge six-armed thing before her, but she felt a sudden and powerful heat at her back. The room was bathed in a low scarlet light.

“Kali. Duck.“

She ducked. Over her head streaked a comet of bright scarlet fire that coiled and twisted as it flew, snapping and igniting the red cords as it barrelled through the air. The husks it struck made a whistling sound as the sheer heat sublimated their bodies into steam. Even the husks the fire missed took damage as the plastics of their false skin warped and melted into their joints.

Kali had her path.

She drew the kinetic wrench from the slot on her back. The switch clicked into place, the motors spun up, the subtle vibration of the augurs felt familiar in her hands. It was almost calming. Meditative even. It focused her. Kali took a deep breath.

She drew her right foot along the ground in a half circle behind her. The action reminded the teacher of an animal scraping its hooves along the ground to test the terrain before it charged. Kali exhaled.

There was a diminuendo of sharp hisses as her rig hydraulics fired into explosive action, falling into a rapid, chugging, rhythm as she gathered momentum, the kinetic wrench poised over her shoulder, trailing behind her like the feather on a flying crossbow bolt.

Kali thought of her family. The technique she was currently performing was their legacy. Her mothers-mothers-mothers-mother had originally developed it as a shock-and-awe tactic to end conflicts with a single blow. Had her mother seen her now, she would have said Kali was doing it “a great disservice.“ As at this point in the charge, Kali was supposed to be bellowing a war cry. But she was not.

She was laughing. She could never help herself.

It was a tremendous sound. Her voice was clear and deep, disarmingly loud with an edge of wild mania that resonated deep in the bones. It made the rest of the party shiver.

The six armed thing reared up on its armatures like a centipede, armatures poised to strike, and made a rattling hiss that did very little to dissuade the 350 pound battering ram of elated destruction barrel towards it.

Kali came into striking range. The things armatures scythed down at her.

The laughter came to a crescendo at, at the very last moment, she feinted left. The overhead strike was a distraction. Her grip on the wrench changed as she pivoted her entire body, simultaneously avoiding the counterattack and converting her momentum into inertia. The air rippled as the kinetic wrench came around in a full circle with a slight upward angle, and hit the six-armed thing like a freight train.

It proved to be flimsier than expected. One of its legs was entirely blown off, along with several ancillary parts. A shower of plastic hands and vertebra cascaded through the air as if the thing were made from stacked wooden blocks.

The thing toppled to its back, scrambling to right itself like a drowning insect. The laughter didnt stop as Kali fell upon it, flowing like well-armed water as she deflected blows, hammering the struggling limbs into immobile scrap.

–

With the flow staunched, the rest of the husks made easy work. The red cord the teacher ignited had spread, the whole cavernous web burned slow, bathing the space in candlelight.

Kali and the student were hard at work. They sat, crouched over the assembly of stolen and repaired medical technology that had been the six-armed things workstation, the contents of the students backpack spread across the table according to some method nobody but the pair understood. Nico sat upon a nearby battery tower, staring down at the work with his compound eyes.

Slowly, the duo repaired the scavenged parts of the students mechanical arm with the remnants of the salvage the student had collected from the knight.

It was an extremely difficult task. The internal constructions were entirely different from each other, a blend of proprietary parts and customized band-aid fixes that would take an expert pit mechanic and a heavy-industrial work crew armed with a cavalcade of extremely specific prosthetics armatures hours to complete. 

Luckily, the student was an expert pit mechanic, Kali had a heavy-industrial work rig, and at their disposal was a cavalcade of extremely specific prosthetics armatures. Even so, the task took them a few hours to complete.

“You’re not an anesthesiologist. If you put me under you’d probably kill me.“

“You’re sure?“

“Yes. Im looking at my vitals right now, all signs clear. The topical anesthetic already hit my arm. Do it.“

Kali nodded. She pressed a button on the medical armature. There was a small hydraulic hiss as the rig bolt hammered itself into the students flesh, welding itself to her skeleton. She could barely feel anything, but the sensation was not exactly pleasant, and grit her teeth to keep the world from spinning.

“Is it ready?“ Said an oddly pleasant female voice from just over the students shoulder.

She jumped a bit in her seat as she realized how close the teacher had gotten without her noticing again.

“Kali?“

Kali nodded. “You ready? The neural shock might feel different when we hook it up.“

“Hook me up.“

The prosthetic snapped into place like it was always meant to be there. For a split second, color and sense went haywire as the students brain scrambled to figure out what this new 20% of its nervous system was. When the world came back into focus she found herself staring at her new arm.

It was, in her expert opinion, a masterpiece. Every component was top of the line, and the parts that weren’t she made custom. A composite carbonsteel exoskeleton with a military-grade nanite-maille for nigh-indestructible skin that continued all the way up to her shoulder. Every joint was repurposed from a medical armature that used ultra-high-precision maglev actions. The nervous system was made from a tailored sample of her own nerve tissue, synthesized with silver, and painstakingly hand-laid into place.

“Catch!“

Without thinking, the student caught the small object Kali had tossed at her. There were “oohs“ of wonder as she opened her palm to reveal a synthetic eye, fragile as a fresh grape, that she had caught undamaged.

The student beamed at her handiwork.

“Now for a strength test! Try punching that wall.“

The student wandered over to the nearby concrete wall. The rest of the group followed closely after. She took a boxers stance, took a couple experimental swings, then threw a punch at the concrete. 

To the student, it felt like punching a sandcastle. The force knocked a hole nearly two feet in diameter.

Cheers and applause rose from her friends. Except for Kali, who was smirking with her fingers laced. She nodded, and the student nodded back. It was time to show off the real masterpiece.

“Hey miss, sorcerer, you guys remember the gravity lance that knight had? Watch this.“

The student focused for a moment, redirecting power into the mass-drivers embedded into the new forearm.

There was an utterly indescribable noise as spacetime visibly rippled around the students new arm. The punch connected with the wall, blowing a hole so large an entire train could pass through it with headroom to spare. The room shook.

She turned, her arm limp and drained of power at her side, to see the stunned faces of her friends. Damn she was good.


	40. Doll

Life as a doll was comfortable.

It was a far cry from the sweat and tears of life in the cities of new babel and an even further cry from the storm of lead and death that counted for life beyond its walls. It was warm in the winters. It was cool in the summers. There was always food to eat and wine to drink and a soft place to sleep. But they were a doll.

From the moment the sorcerer was born, they were a doll. They were a commission, a pet project by some B-list member of the Lavish and Gracious House Thraace, made from some specific blend of hand-tailored, hand-cultivated designer genetics and even now the sorcerer remembered their womb. Sometimes they still dreamed of gestating. Floating in that little glass tank of artificial amnion, gazing out with some primordial half-consciousness at the eyes that watched them for signs of imperfections. Still they could remember the hands. So deliberate. So precise. Trimming their pre-born form like a bonsai tree.

Growing a body is slow work. It takes time, expertise, and a host of valuable resources. All things house Thraace had in spades, and house Thraace wanted quick results. Express delivery they said. Only the finest for a customer of such status. Built to specification. After just 18 months of gestation, the sorcerer was born with a body at 20, but a mind at 0.

So it was laced with gold and silicon. Delicate, flexible circuitry that sped up the learning process. Simple augmentations compared to the ones given to the court, but their mind devoured information, bypassing years of childhood and adolescence in mere months. Still, it was a dolls mind. Commissioned to be submissive, obedient, just like the others.

Though minds are complex things, and since their birth the sorcerer had been gripped by a strange impulse. A deep, burning, curiosity.

Members of the harem caste were never taught to read, but it was never an obstacle to the sorcerer. It was everywhere. In the strange mechanisms of the prosthetics, in the music they were asked to dance to, in the beds of little blooming arthropods in the bath house gardens. Every patter, every object that glowed and whirred, every living thing was a feast for their mind and their hunger was bottomless. Guests sometimes mentioned that their mind always seemed miles away, focused on something else, on something that was not being a doll.

Being a doll was not the worst thing in the world. Not always. Most of their guests were cordial enough, asking for no more than honeyed words and close company. Of course there was no shortage of guests with strange tastes but after enough time, one always gets used to strange tastes. It was work. It was acting. Slipping on the right clothes, the right words, the right prosthetics. It was never difficult for the sorcerer. They were, quite literally, made for this. Every joint, every length of skin, every organ, was built swappable. All it took was a few moments in the changing room. The bath house lobby had a menu. They were build-your-own, and the guests obliged. In a way it was a comfort to the sorcerer. A new body for every guest. A snake shedding its skin every hour and a half.

There was that one. The one with the strong careful hands and the belly and the soft mechanical eyes. The one who would read to them in the quiet morning hours. His voice was awkward and stuttery and sometimes he would turn red as the evening sky when he noticed how intently his audience was listening, but the sorcerer could have listened for hours.

When he noticed the little port on the side of their head, he even offered to show them some sorcery. Something small. No more than a party trick. Barely even a spell by professional standards. He showed them how to change the song on the nickelodeon using only their mind.

But that was all they needed.

Because it was never the guests. It was their “master.” The one who commissioned them. An Arcadian with a sharp face and a toothy zipper smile. A well-born of no merit, always decked in last-seasons finest clothes, eager to boast about his expensive neuro-augments. 

The sorcerer never understood him. There were members of the harem who were built to enjoy pain. But something about that just didn’t work for him. He wanted fear, wanted resistance, wanted agony.  
And one day, deep in his private sub-basement room of the bath house, he set aside some time with his favorite doll, a ninety minute slot where he was “not to be bothered.“

It was a simple thing. Barely a spell by professional standards. No more than a party trick. Ten minutes in, the sorcerer simply switched off his liver and watched as the toxic runoff from his augments turned his blood to sludge.

It was a slow, agonizing death, but the sorcerer still did not understand. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t bring themself to enjoy his pain.

The trial was a blur. Apparently the man wasn’t liked very much, even by the other members of house Thraace. In fact, there were rumors of a plot to kill him already circulating when he died. But justice had to be done, and so the sorcerer was ruled to be exiled from their home.

However upon leaving, they found a group of monks waiting just outside the city gates. Standing with them, was a man with strong careful hands, a belly, and soft mechanical eyes.


	41. The Bride

The history of the world is carved into its skin. The past is everywhere, written upon the earth in a great and terrible hand.

There were many stories about the lands that Kali’s people called home. To some it was called The Whetstone, the land upon which the old gods would sharpen their weapons before they went to war. To others it was the Flayed Plains, the great soft back of the world that bore the punishment for every ancient and forgotten sin. To others still it was called The Gills, the place where the mercifcul old gods cut gills into a world drowning in burning rain.

“This place was once whole.“ Kali’s mother would say. “But in their greed and rage the old gods lashed out upon the earth, carving and scarring it with their great swords.”

It was a story every baqara child learned. When Kali’s thoughts wandered to her old home that story always seemed to enter her mind. Maybe thats where it all started for her, she thought. It was supposed to be a moral lesson, a story about controlling ones strength and never giving in to the indulgence of anger. A warning about the hubris of the old gods and the their squabbles that broke the earth.

To her mothers dismay, it never seemed to work on Kali. Stories intended to warn and dissuade only fascinated her. Kali’s people were shepherds by long tradition. For ten mothers time they drove cattle through this cracked and scarred land, but Kali’s mind could never stay on cattle. The long hours of travel gave her time to think. In the dry season she would sleep on the roof of the caravan. How many nights had she spent gazing up at the starlight diffusing through the amber clouds, wondering if that’s where the old gods lived? Her people called this place the Hundred Cuts, but if it was the old gods who broke this place, what did they call it? What was this place before it was bled dry?

When Kali was eleven years old the Burning Horde came. Every man woman and child in the caravan knew it was only a matter of time. One couldn’t ignore the travelers tales. Stories of the great pyre to the south, the building flame creeping ever upwards. Her people were no strangers to conflict, but the sheer numbers of the horde made true resistance an impossible task. Though, in many ways resistance was not the goal.

The horde sought to add to their ranks. Hands for their great pyre, their conquering army. By rifle and fire and sword Kali’s people were tested, and deemed worthy to join the horde. Rejection of such a generous offer was understood not to be an option. The horde would guard their borders and Kali’s grandmother was given a seat on the kurultai, but taxes were to be paid in cattle and labor.

Kali was sent away. Four long years she spent riding with the horde. When she arrived they wasted no time, the process of interning and training the “kindling” was efficient and effective.

On the first night, she was put under and fitted with rig sockets. As she recovered from the surgery she was given medicine to kill the pain and trained in simple maintenance tasks, a mix of strength and dexterity work that helped her body painlessly adapt to the implants. All of this was paired with basic vocabulary and horde sign language used for communicating between vehicles. Meals were served twice a day. It was exhausting, grimy work. Kali loved every second of it.

There before her was the world and the history carved upon it. It traced its way down through the canyons of the hundred cuts, down to the mire of the glowing swamps, it followed the sea to feet of the ashen cascades, all the way up to the borders of winter superior. The burning horde rolled like thunder across these broken and cracked lands with a strength and speed that rivaled nothing Kali could ever have imagined. Some days she was assigned to keep watch on the artillery rigs, to scan the horizon for movement. Here she would stare at the great roaring procession, a river of steel and flame made by the hands of men that put her childhood dreams into perspective. If this was what man could make, the weapons of the old gods must not be far off.

The horde was to head east. They were to skirt the impassable wall of winter superior, to follow it to the western mountains, but the horde would not approach the stone forest. The question gripped Kali’s mind like a vice. What could be so dangerous as to divert the course of the entire horde?

Then she saw the wake in the sky.

She had heard legends of the old citadels but it was only when confronted with the ruined megacity that Kali learned the truth. They were not legends at all. The legends were not grand enough. They did not do justice to the sheer impossible magnitude of Teleth Kazel. Frost gripped the structure, its base wreathed in what could have been a mountain of snow. From its great carbonsteel boughs hung colossal icicles from which cascades of water wept, thundering into the earth, carving rivers into the lifeless stone. At its peak beyond the clouds the cities feeble heat caused an eternal snowfall that shrouded the entire titanic structure in billowing mist. From this distance, Teleth Kazel looked as if it were veiled in an immense ghostly wedding gown. A great dead bride left at a great dead pulpit.

It called to her.


	42. Burial

The space beneath the medical ward was dark. The old generators had long failed and the relays from above could only stretch so far into the forgotten deep. Where the medical ward above was bright and sterile, bathed in flickering light and brushed linoleum, there was a strange air of warmth to it, a sense of habitation. For all its stark trappings, things shuffled through its halls living whatever strange half-lives they could.

But this place was different. What may have once been a tile floor was cracked and degraded beyond recognition, ground into a layer of dust and gravel. The walls that may once have been concrete were buckled and cracked and worn and more closely resembled a natural cave than anything manmade.

The students mind did what it always did on these long walks. It wandered. She student remembered home. She remembered her trapping expeditions in the quiet morning hours just before dawn, when the world was still dragging itself bleary from slumber. The world was still then. The nocturnal predators would be returning to their warrens, fat and happy from a nights hunt and if you were quick, you could slip out, check your traps, and be back at camp before the diurnal beasts wanted breakfast. The world felt calm and safe. One still had to keep their eyes and ears sharp of course, but that little window of time had a way of making the teeming wild feel as if it were garden of a grand estate.

The dark and cold place the student now found herself in could not have been more different. It was still like a placid lake, like a moonless night. Maybe still wasn't the right word, thought the student. This place was waiting.

A buzzing voice broke the silence.

“You know, in other circumstances I would have to kill you all for even stepping foot in this place.”

“Nico, not the time for jokes.“ Said Kali.

“Its not a joke.“

“QUERY: This is a holy place for your faith, correct?”

“Yeah. One of the holiest. We aren’t supposed to let outsiders defile this place.“

“Right.“ Said the student, kicking over a small pile of dust and rubble. “Wouldn’t want anyone messing this place up.“

“Hey! If you were a god, wouldn’t you want to be left in peace when you die?“ Said Nico.

“STATEMENT: I do not intend to die. Transcendence is preferable.“

“Transcendence.“ Replied Nico, a shade of arrogance in his voice. “You can mirror your brain from server to server but one day something will get you. Doesn’t it just delay the inevitable?“

“STATEMENT: Perhaps. If life can be extended, there is nothing wrong with extending it.“

“But when the end does come, will you be afraid?“

The sorcerer said nothing, but their cooling fans whirred a bit harder.

“When the end does come, I hope its somewhere nicer than this place. Its a bit of a dump.“ Said the student.

“Just what’s wrong with this place?“ Said Nico, clearly a bit offended.

“Its not...Its not natural.“ Said the student. “Its like you said a while back. Death is just one step in the cycle. Limbs and organs can be repurposed, used to heal the sick and crippled. These aren’t even my original eyes.“ The student turned to look at Nico. “They’re my grandmothers.“

Nico gave her a strange look. One the student couldn’t quite recognize. She noticed her teacher behind him. She had a similar look.

After a long moment, Nico spoke up, clearly upset. “Do you know how Aesthetics are raised, swampling?“

The teacher placed a hand on his shoulder. His chitin bristled with surprise but smoothed over as he collected himself.

“We’re r-strategy breeders. You mammals have children one at a time, maybe twins if you’re lucky. We are born into a clutch of more than 300, and we are born hungry. Within the first two days of my life I devoured nine of my siblings. As we become nymphs, they send us to school, let us learn and play with each other. The hive saints force us into deathmatches. They force us to kill each other year after year until only one is left. I’ve eaten thirteen of my siblings.”

The student felt sick. “I...I had no idea...“

“It’s not something I like to think about either.“

“I’m sorry.“ She fumbled with the words. “If you like, I could carry you for a bit. Consider it an apology.“

“I’m still mad at you for calling the Red Nest a dump.“ He said, wrapping his arms around the students shoulders.

“Fair, fair. Im sorry. Just try not to fall asleep on me.“

Kali, who had been listening intently, finally spoke up. “I don’t think I would mind this place. When my grandmother died, I got to ride with the funeral procession. The shamans carried her into a cave in the mountains. It seemed cozy.“

“See?“ Nico said. “Now if you all would be so kind as to not talk about the Red Nest like its a dump?“

“It is actually a dump though.” Said the Teacher.

The entire group stopped, and turned to look at her.

“The medical ward was also a research facility.” she continued “This place was a body farm.“


	43. Deep Camp

Footsteps did not echo here. The material that once lined the walls of this place had gone soft and rotten in the dark. The student did not like this place. It was cramped and dark and far too quiet. There didn't seem to be any life at all, just corridor after corridor of empty rooms and oily red mold. 

This far deep the trail cairns were getting steadily less frequent, but eventually the group found themselves in the remains of a stone atrium. It was humble to say the least. A bare assembly of concrete where the sharp gravel of the crumbling floor tiles had been swept away. The only notable feature was the old planter at its center. In the city's prime it likely featured some sort of tastefully pruned shrub or topiary. In the time since its abandonment, it had been long overtaken by fungi and pale necroflora. The trail cairns hung from the entrance and scorch marks on the floor from from makeshift firepits made it obvious that this was as good a place as any to camp.

The Student spoke up, "I think this is as good a place as any to make camp."

This was met by a grumble and a beep of relief. It seemed that navigating this place was just as stressful for everyone else.

"Finally." yawned Nico, dropping off the students shoulders, "Its too dark here, Ive been in torpor for hours."

"Once we get a fire going, you get first watch."

"Fine by me, but I'll need something to eat before long."

"I don't think there's anything alive down here, but once I eat I can synthesize something for you."

By way of response, Nico sat down, leaned his back up against the planter, and let his eyes glaze over as he watched everyone work. This was, as Nico had tried to explain several times but only found success after attempt number three, his version of sleeping. The sorcerer sat down next to him, the lights on their head flickering slowly as they entered low power mode. 

There was a hydraulic hissing and snapping as Kali decoupled from her work rig. First the hands, then the forearms, then the biceps. 

"I've got you." Said the teacher as she reached down and grabbed the handle near the base of Kali's neck. Kali nodded. With a final hiss, the rig came free. The teachers arm bent slightly with the weight, stretching like a rubber hose, as Kali slipped out from under the rig as if it was a 60 kilogram sweater. Gingerly, she took it from the teacher and lowered it to the ground. She thanked the teacher and stretched her sore arms, watching in mild horror as the teachers arm un-distended back into shape. 

"Kali, how are you on food?"

This seemed to snap her out of whatever thought she was lost in. "Hm? Oh, uhh. Ive got enough cud to last until tomorrow morning so I should probably eat something."

"Can you eat anything in there?" She said, pointing to the old concrete planter. "I know I can eat the little orange fungi, and I can probably eat the glowing blue and white ones with the frills."

"My people call the orange ones Bilecaps. We use them as an emetic for poisonings. The blue and white ones are called Brides-of-the-River. They cause fever, hallucination, and severe dehydration. You should try the grey ones with the brown patches on top, we call them cattlebane, they cause liver and heart failure." 

"Cool! I'll get cookin'." Said the student, stuffing a handful of all three into her bag. "I can't eat necrovegetation, but theres a ton here."

Kali nodded as she surveyed the selection. "There must be a body or two under the soil, palecreep doesn't usually spread this much unless its got plenty of food. Most of this is too stony for me to eat, but do you see those long ones? The ones shaped like ribs?" 

The student nodded, rapt as Kali walked around the planter snapping off handfuls of pale shapes.

"Thats bone coral. You can grind it into dust and use it to make stock. And here, the one that looks like little trees made of wires, these are aljubid, they have a yolk. Its not going to taste good, but If you get a fire going, can make a decent soup out of all this." 

"Gotcha." She turned tot he teacher. "Miss!"

The teachers head twisted around 180 degrees. "Yes?"

"Is this mold safe to burn?"

"Just a moment, let me see." She said, sinking a hand into the mess of rot that caked the walls. After a long moment of concentration, the teacher responded. "Yes, I think we would do quite well to burn it. But, I think I should be the one to collect it."

"Oh, well don't worry about it miss, I can-"

"My student, I am not being polite. Do not remove your mask unless you are near an open flame, and whatever you do, do not allow this mold to come in contact with the rotted patches of your flesh."

The student stared nervously at the bandages around her legs and midsection. 

"Do not worry. If you need to replace the bandages, I will keep everything sterile. Just be very careful."

\--

The clump of mold was tricky to light, but once it caught, it burned surprisingly well. Kali emptied the last of her autostill into the pot and soon enough, they had a cauldron of what Kali assured the others was definitely soup, and several skewers of roasted mushrooms that the student rated as "A solid four out of ten." She ate half, and after some biosynthetic protein rearranging, she woke up Nico, opened a vein in her palm, and bled into his mouth until his eyes cleared up again.

"What did you even eat? Your blood tastes all thick and bitter." 

"Terribly sorry milord, I'll send my blood back to the chef."

By way of apology, Nico grimaced and stuck out his tongue. The student did the same as she bit in to another mushroom skewer to regain the lost nutrients. 

"You know, this isnt half bad." Said Kali, drinking straight from the pot of "soup."

"It smells like burning swamp hair." Nico said, hovering over to sit next to Kali. 

"No it doesn't." Said the student. "I know what burning swamp hair smells like. That smells worse."

"Neither of you have any taste. No taste at all." Said Kali, taking another swig.

"You're one to talk! You eat wood!" 

"Nico a few hours ago I watched you drool uncontrollably when you spotted a recycler."

"They are delicious."

"Actually Im with Nico on this one. They use fat for heat retention. If you butcher them right you can make the furnace go haywire and they cook themselves from the inside out. The grinder doors are all muscle on the inside, it makes damn good brisket."


	44. A Rotten Sonata

A Shaft Diver becomes familiar with ruin. A life spent descending into the forgotten warrens of the world tends to make them less forgotten. In the quiet of her travels Kali would ponder the places she sifted through. She would wonder what the people who lived and worked here were like, and think to herself that the next time she ended up back in new babel, she would buy the appraisers a drink and ask them. She never did. 

In a way, she never wanted to. It never sat well with her. It felt too much like digging up a corpse and rooting through its pockets. A breach of privacy somehow. As if she were stepping over the line in her professional relationship with the abandoned megacity of Teleth Thadeyn. All that said, she could never help but wonder.

It was one of her favorite parts of being a shaft diver. Imagining the daily routines and strange rituals of the old gods. She wondered if they ever herded cows like she did. Probably not. Where would you find grazing space in this ruin? Everything was too vertical, and what green space existed was overrun with dangerous predators. She thought maybe the cows here had wings. Or maybe the shepherds had wings, and carried the cows from level to level? But the chairs she had seen all had solid backs, they couldn't have had wings. Maybe the wings were detachable?

She was getting sidetracked, and intentionally so. Because there was nothing that could be gleaned from the Red Nest.

The dull red mold only grew thicker as they descended into the earth. It devoured everything. Any passing semblance of the old world was striped away. Any decoration or likeness to home was replaced by increasingly alien growths of deep red mold. It only got thicker. Healthier. What began as a dry coat of red dust solidified into a thick mosslike carpet. As they proceeded even deeper it began to resemble a field, with long hairlike structures that reached up to their shins, some even terminating in pale nodules that popped at the slightest motion, like a parody of a flower. Then it became like raw meat. The false grass braided into sinewy strands grown double, triple, with their own weight. The walls and floors of the ruin had been supplanted entirely with layer upon layer of faux-gristle. 

This was no longer a ruin, Kali thought. The rot owned this place now. Maybe this is what it meant to be forgotten, to be churned and mulched so fine as to be nothing but something else.

The realization came on slow. It began as barest sense of arrhythmia like the first creeping moments of an anxiety attack. The subtlest sensation, a feeling that almost every living thing is accustomed to. As it grew stronger it dawned on the travelers that not only was something amiss, but that their gut reactions were correct, their fears confirmed. 

The mold had a heartbeat. 

Kali and the Student were thoroughly shaken by the realization. Their feelings were occupied with reconciling opposing instincts of "Ive Seen Weirder And It Was Fine" and "It Was Only Fine Because I Ran Away Screaming." The only thing keeping them from taking a handful of very rapid steps back to assess the situation, was Nico's reaction. Slowly, he ran his hands along the beating walls of the tunnel, regarding the rot-meat with a mixture of religious awe and deep curiosity. The Sorcerer seemed similarly curious, and was poking the wall with their relay. 

"This is the bed." He whispered, "The Husking Ground. To die here, in the arms of my lady, to rot sweet and sallow..." he began, but trailed off into a litany. 

"Statement: Nico, we should move on. Our companions are likely eager to leave this place."

"Oh. Right. Right, of course. I-"

Suddenly, there came a new voice. It sounded weak, only audible because it was electronically amplified.

"You..."

The party whirled around, searching for the source of the noise. The first to notice was the Kali, who, upon realizing who it was, was only barely able to grab Nico in time.

"YOU! HOW DARE YOU! DEFILER! I'LL DIGEST YOU FROM THE INSIDE-" Nico transformed almost immediately, his bellows of rage devolving into a series of hissing shrieks as his tongue lashed towards the knight suspended from the ceiling, wings beating as hard and fast as they possibly could, struggling against Kali's strength, who had only managed to catch him by an ankle. 

"Nico! Don't! Look!" Kali aimed her rig upwards.

There were dozens of bodies, all in the same red and white of the Altas Gladius, all run through with dull red fibers. The motion was almost imperceptible at first, but as the party stared, they saw the gentle motion of the grisly vines that still hung limp from the ceiling. With every beat of the great distant heart of the Red Nest, the fibers would twitch, inching themselves towards Nico, hungry and waiting.

The knight was suspended from the ceiling by their ankles, arms hanging like the same false vines that wound around their knees. 

When Nico spoke, there was an authority to his voice Kali had never heard before. "Where is My Lady?"

"Flee..."

"Where is she?" 

"...Cancer..."

"What?"

"...in...Cancer..."

The knight was cut off by a sound like a great mass pulling itself through thick mud. The tendrils of rot crept down under its armor, piercing flesh and cocooning limbs. The knight gave no resistance. The only sound that punctuated their death was a single exhale of relief. The canopy above flexed and twisted as something deep in the tendrils shifted. There are no words to describe the voice that spoke from that choir of dead throats. It was the voice of a thing that had never known a voice, only its rotting impression. A profane concerto composed for broken instruments. And it said:

"Come, my child."


	45. The Great Cancer

Nico's singing was strange. His kind did not have lungs, breathing instead by flexing their carapace to force air through spiracles in their skin. He hummed some old church hymn, lost in a trance, his body rising and depressing in time with changes in pitch and octave. The hymn, unlike a throated voice in every way that mattered, resembled more a bagpipe, or calliope organ. It was a sound with no beginning and no end that hummed and buzzed in the mind, endlessly reharmonizing with itself in a way that resonated off the bones. Haunting and beautiful in equal measure.

There are no words that could do justice to the choir that joined him, beckoning.

Kali had expected him to take off at a run, but Nico proceeded with his head held low, hands clasped together in prayer, walking at a funeral pace towards the source of the impossible noise. She followed close. The others hesitated.

"I should do this alone." He said, his hands still clasped in prayer. "You're not allowed in here."

"I'm- We're not going to leave you." Said Kali, shooing a look towards her companions.

The student sighed, "Nico, we love you and everything, but this is straight up a god. Or at least something people worship as a god."

Kali gave her a look that said "What the hell are you doing? Look at him!" She responded with a look that said "I know! But be realistic!"

She sighed again. "Look. Nico. It would be insane to let you go in there alone, no matter what. So are you sure this is what you want?"

He gave a small nod. "I have to. It is my duty to my lady."

"Statement: I do not detect any signs of life."

"I have to see for myself. I have to."

"Then we will follow you." Said the teacher. Yet, the student noticed the hesitation in her teachers voice. 

The mold here was thick. It blanketed the ground nearly six inches deep, packed and tangled into a soft false-earth, complete with reaching filaments of false grass. Like veins it wrapped and twisted along the ground, forming thick gnarled roots that fed abortive false trees. Stalks of ropy mold coiling aimlessly towards a light that would never touch this place. Their soft and rotten boughs baring clutches of pregnant spores, like a parody of fruit. All of it twitched, it shuddered in time with the heartbeat at the center of it all. A center the travelers now beheld. 

It was dark, but in the low firelight they could see the form of something massive. The impression of its many legs reaching far up towards the ceiling of the cavernous space. At one time it would have been arachnoid, one of the tall and thin ones, with its huge legs supporting the relatively small thorax. Nothing more about it could be discerned, as its entire body was carpeted thick with dense red mold. 

"My lady! Its me! It Niccolo!"

The singing stopped. There was a long moment as Nico knelt before the rotting mass. 

There came a wet cracking sound like a thousand newborn chicks tearing out from a thousand eggs as something shifted beneath the moldering body of the colossal arachnid. 

"Welcome, child." Said a voice that sounded distinctly un-ladylike in the sense that it barely sounded like a voice at all.

Nico's voice trembled as he spoke. "My lady. Where is my lady?"

"You can see me child. I am all around you."

Nico was shaking. "I don't understand. You don't sound like my lady. What is going on? Where is she?"

There was another wet cracking sound, but this time, something emerged from the depths of the rotting thorax. It was a face, or what was left of it, complete with matted, rotting hair. It was followed by a spine. Then another. Then another. It writhed like a marionette, drawing closer and closer to Nico, until it rested before him, hanging in space at a comfortable speaking distance like the lure of an anglerfish.

"Niccolo. I am here." The face clacked open and closed a few times, but not in time with the voice. 

Nico burst into tears.

The head retracted with a stomach-churning litany of sucking crunches. There was a sound like a kinetic wrench activating, a pair of lithium flames sparking to life, and a cooling fan spinning up. 

"Apologies. Please, guests, lower your weapons. I forget how...troubled..the living are by rot."

There was a tense moment. Nobody moved.

"Query: With who, and/or what, are we conversing?"

"A good question. A moment." There was another shifting sound near the travelers. Hundreds of eyes pushed their way to the surface of the thorax, surverying the guests.

"I am many things. I am the hive saint for Niccolo, and the members of the Altas Gladius who tried to exterminate the both of them, I am the being they call Opilion the Harvestman, as well as the intelligence known as The Great Cancer. I am all that rots in this place."

"Query: Do you mean us any harm?"

"Hmmmm." The space rumbled as the thing pondered. "I have not decided yet. Moving my form takes quite a bit of energy, and while I have recently eaten, I am not quite finished digesting. I am ever hungry, but It has been a long, long while since I have had the pleasure of conversation. None of you are ripe yet, but one of you smells as if you are already sweetly rotting."

The student gulped.

"Hmmm. The Altas Gladius seemed to hate you little one, but the sisterhood seemed to be quite fond of you, though perhaps for unsavory reasons. Hmmm. What say you Niccolo? It is the deepest wish of your kind to die in my bosom is it not? I could make it quick, painless."

Tears still streamed from Nico's eyes. "I don't- I don't know anymore. I wished it for so long but- but I don't know."

"Hmm. The part of me that was your lady is disappointed in you. The parts of me that were the altas gladius hate you. The parts of me that are neither do not want you. I will leave the choice to you."

Things were quiet for a moment, Kali placed a hand on Nico's shoulder.

Again, the thing spoke. "I must admit, I have been terribly rude. I should have addressed you first, but you allowed the Aesthetic to speak first."

To the surprise of everyone, the teacher responded, her voice flat. "Any of mine in you?"

"Lots of Delta, a few from Epsilon. I am just rife with stories. Legends. That sort of thing."

"Typical. I've been away from home."

"Ahhhhh. Which makes you which? The seventh? The eighth?"

"Eighth."

"Oh dear. Well. Give grandmother our regards."

"Sure."

The others were regarding the teacher with stunned silence. The thing spoke again.

"Have you not told them?"

"Told us what?" Said the student. 

"My family history is complicated. We can talk about it later. Nico, are you okay?"

"I'm confused. I'm confused but I don't want to die now. Not here."

Kali held him. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah." He said. "I'd miss you."

The student, who had been in a state of near panic for this entire circumstance, blurted: "I think we should leave now."

The teacher, equally nervous, began to leave. "Yes. I agree."

But they found the exit blocked by a wall of red flesh.

"I have decided." Said the voice. "I will not kill you. But I want you to tell them, Architect. I want you to tell them what you are."


	46. The Eighth Daughter

The teacher was quiet. A long moment passed. 

When she spoke, her voice was untouched by her normal vague dispassion. "Spare me thine indignities."

When she turned, something in her had changed. Her normal demeanor of enigmatic watchfulness seemed to melt, and in its place was an alien confidence. The student could not place the emotion on her strange face, but Nico and the sorcerer recognized it immediately. It was the scorn of nobility, the high and terrible anger of one whose good and proper place in the world was challenged by the unworthy. There was an overpowering scent of ozone as tongues of scarlet flame danced along her fingers. 

But the Great Cancer made a sound. To call that sound laughter would be naive. The crescendo of dead throats was not horrifying. It was traumatic. It was a sound that reached into those oldest nerves that bypassed all rational thought in service of the single burning instinct to survive, and plucked them like a cello string. It was a sound that, for a few nightmarish moments, shattered the petty illusion of life, leaving only the knowledge that the body you inhabit is already a corpse, and one day it will be repurposed by something that deserves it more than you do. 

"Oh come now architect, we both know I am being more than generous."

There was another stomach-churning sucking sound as the bed of mold shifted. Blades of marbled rot and calcified bone pushed themselves from the mass. Surrounding the travelers like teeth, as if the group were suspended above the throat of a titanic creature that strained to bite through the mass and swallow them whole. Beyond the teeth, the travelers could make out shapes in the dark. Figures that moved like marionettes, grisly puppets strung from below, drifting just close enough to make themselves known, but not seen. The teacher looked to her companions, and quenched her flame. 

"Very well." 

Carefully, she strode closer to her friends and sat, crossing her legs and steepling her fingers in thought. 

"Where to begin.."

\--

"Long, long ago, before the sky was acrid and dead, before the great citadels were constructed, there lived the people that people used to be. I do not know much about them, but I know that they were unlike us. They were homogeneous, all alike save some minor aesthetic variation, they were comfortable, possessing luxuries and technology beyond our wildest imaginations, and they were fearful, though not without cause.

I know not what they feared, but it was that fear that caused them to make this place, to make the megacities. These ruins were to be their safe haven. Perhaps these places were to be their umbrella to hide from the rain. Perhaps they were strongholds to fend off the engines of calamity. Perhaps it was before the rain, and whatever terrible thing they feared perished along with them. Regardless, what they feared above all else, was extinction.

And so the smartest among them devised a contingency plan. A failsafe. And deep, deep in the bowels of this place, cloistered and sealed in the secret vaults, a factory was built. It fitted with a library of genetic material, samples of every plant and animal that could be found in the old world, including humans. Especially humans. For if the unthinkable happened, the factory was built to reproduce humanity from scratch. It had everything it needed. Fields of gestation chambers, artificial wombs, living spaces, nurseries, schoolhouses, fields for agriculture, refineries for ore and stone, and legions of mechanical servants that could venture beyond the sealed walls for material. But this raised a problem. Those nurseries would require a nurse. Those schoolhouses would need a teacher. To put it simply, the children would need a mother. My mother.

So they built one. They built one into the bones of that place. An artificial intelligence, first of its kind, the Model-0 MATRIARCH, raised by hand on humanities best impulses, she would be nurturing, kind, and loving to the new humanity. She would make them better. She would make sure that we did not repeat the same mistakes.

But something went wrong. Something went deeply and terribly wrong. Maybe she degraded over time, went rampant after those thousand years in the lonely dark. Maybe the samples corrupted, and she is doing her best to work from imperfect blueprints. After all this time, she can't remember what humans were like, but she 'is quite sure she'll get it eventually!' 

All she produces are miscarriages. Malformed, inhuman things. The lucky ones suffocate and die within minutes, the unlucky ones live, enduring a life of pain and misery, forced to steal parts from other organisms to repair their corrupted forms. Mother raises them, nurtures them, allows them to feed and grow. In time they come to love her, to call her mother. But they are not her 'true children.' They are experiments. She does not love their misbegotten, imperfect, forms. Eventually, they are evaluated for their 'perfection' and if they do not pass her test they are abandoned, left to starve and rend and kill, just to see which ones last the longest, just to see how she can iterate on the next batch. My elder sister named them demons, after some old story. 

She produced help. Beings hand-tailored to be her ideal assistants. To 'help her around the house.' To assist her in her duties as architects of the new humanity. Beings that would watch over the construction process, to care for the children who showed promise, to touch and hold the ones that deserved love, and to exterminate the ones who did not. The first was named Alpha, the second named Beta, and so on. 

I am the eighth. My given name was Theta. By the order of my mother, and the responsibility of my own hands, I have caused impossible suffering."

Violet tears streamed from her eyes. Her posture remained rigid, formal.

"I should have told you all earlier. Especially you, my student. I used your ignorance of my nature to indulge in the fantasy of a real friendship. I fear such things are not for me. I do not deserve it, but I beg of you all to forgive me."

The student was quiet.

Kali spoke first, her voice quiet. "That's...That's a lot. I have...I have questions but I need to think."

Nico spoke next, but avoided the teachers eyes. "Honestly? I genuinely didn't think it was possible, but Its refreshing to know that someone had a worse mother than I did. You seem remorseful, so I'm willing to forgive."

"Statement: All things change. You have saved our lives several times. I am also willing to forgive."

Kali seemed to arrive at her question. "Okay. I get why you left, that sounds terrible, but why return? You got out. Why come back to Teleth Thadeyn?"

When the student finally spoke up. It was clear from her tone that the answer the teacher gave would have to be perfect, that this was her only chance. "And what, precisely, do you think you can do to make up for everything? How could you possibly expect to make this right?"

Of all the things the student expected to see. Of all the possible emotions she was expecting on the face of her teacher. She absolutely was not expecting to see that maniacal little glint in her eyes. 

"What a coincidence. Your questions actually have the same answer." She said, a shade of her dramatic edge returning to her voice.

"I've come back to kill my mother."


	47. Strange Company

"Damn." Thought the student. 

"Dammit." Thought the student, louder this time.

She had tried to swear off the whole 'having friends' thing. Having everyone you've ever loved slaughtered while you were away will do that to you. She liked the teacher, sure, but she was trying to maintain a distance for this exact goddamn reason. The teachers goals were noble, anyone could see that. You'd have to be an idiot not to empathize with her revenge quest. What truly frustrated the student was that she noticed. Underneath the mischievous light in the teachers eyes, underneath the theatrical lilt in her voice, the student noticed the fear. She noticed the forced confidence, the apprehension, the play at authority that betrayed a fatal seriousness to her words. She noticed something that only a friend would. 

"Great." She thought, hating everything that was happening. "One more thing to lose."

Who was she kidding? What was she going to do? Scream "No!" or "Stop!" or "I can't allow you to put yourself in danger like that!" She knew herself all too well. She could feel her blood pumping. She could feel the spirals on her arm twist and bristle as that old animal purpose welled up inside her. She wished it could have been different. Maybe in another life she was raised as a keeper of songs, or a message runner. Maybe her words could have been beautiful and kind and she could have comforted her friend, talked her down from what was almost certainly a doomed venture. 

But she was a trapper, and there was game afoot.

"How?" She asked aloud, her voice flat. "What's the plan?"

The Teacher made a motion that one less familiar with her biology would have mistaken for her taking a deep breath, as she pretended to take a deep breath.

"Mother is well defended. The Nursery, my home, is entirely sealed off from the rest of the factory. Though she once had control of the automated defenses, they have long since gone rampant. Any demon the defenses haven't been able to kill will likely be strong, feral, and just as hostile to us. Or worse, they will be one of mothers "prime candidates" and entirely loyal to her."

"We barely survived being attacked by one demon, but cool."

"Yes. There is also the problem of my elder sisters. Beta and Gamma are deeply loyal to mother, and will be by her side in the Cradle, guarding her personally. And then there's Delta."

"Delta?"

"She's the worst of us. Honestly, I think even mother is afraid of her. She's taken to 'housekeeping,' wandering the Nursery to exterminate the unworthy young. A task she does with sadistic glee. I would prefer to avoid her at all costs."

"Sounds wise. How do we get in?"

"I know a secret entrance. An old freight corridor, decommissioned before the factory was even built. No sensors or anything. But its sealed tight. Opening it will require special override from the city administration."

"The city administration that has been dead for thousands of years."

"The very same."

"So how do we get that?"

"Statement: The server vaults."

"Exactly. We need to get to the server vaults, but they are up in heaven. The only working elevator is the fortified one used by the city garrison."

"So we need to fight our way through a base controlled by the old-world military, enter the home of the gods, break into their library, steal a key, head back down into the deep places, open a secret back entrance to a factory full of demons, and avoid your murderous, psychotic, sisters long enough to what, pull the plug on your mom?"

"I do not particularly care how we kill her, but yes, that is largely correct."

"Sorry, whats this 'we' stuff? I haven't agreed to come along yet."

"Of course, my apologies my student. I was incorrect to assume." She said, staring directly at the student, making it abundantly clear that the both of them knew damn well she was correct to assume. Despite this, her tone changed, "I know I could never ask your help for something like this."

Kali spoke up. "You're going to need all the help you can get." 

"Yeah." Said Nico from her shoulders. "You'd have to be an idiot to try that alone."

"Agreement: You would most likely die. Our assistance would significantly mitigate that chance."

Violet tears welled up in the teachers eyes. She dried them quickly.

"What about you, my student?"

"Its like Kali said." She said, moving to place a hand on her teachers, freakish, rubbery, shoulder. "You're going to need all the help you can get." 

There was a quiet moment. The teacher took her students hand as if it were the most precious thing she had ever touched. The tears wouldn't stop.

"Indeed." Said a voice that made all five companions jump, a shock of panic running up the spines of those who had them as they remembered what they were sitting on.

Kali recovered her wits the fastest. "Does this mean you'll let us go?"

The Great Cancer let out a noise that was likely supposed to be a low chuckle, but more resembled a death rattle. "Yes, yes, in due time. But it seems that, as much as I would like to assimilate you," There was a sudden sucking gurgling sound as the skulls of what looked like hundreds of demons rose to the surface of the red mass, their jaws snapping, attempting to howl and snarl in their rage. "I want Model Zero MATRIARCH dead even more."

The travelers watched in polite horror as the skulls were sucked forcibly back into the mass. 

"Apologies. I have forgotten my manners. As a matter of fact, It appears I have gifts."

There was another wave of polite horror as the travelers tried not to react.

"You, swampling, you are a synthetimancer correct? Some of me seems to know of your arts. Please, hold out your hand, the non-mechanical one."

The student did so, trying visibly not to show panic as the mold beneath her twisted into an arm with far too many elbows and fingers. It wavered for a moment, twisting as if blow astray by phantom wind. It steadied itself, and slowly, it reached for her. The moment it touched her skin, the world spun. A wave of nausea overook her as the mold burrowed, crawled under her skin. She collapsed, head seized by a sudden and terrible heat as it reached her brain, laying memories that were not hers directly into her hippocampus like a predatory insect making room for its young.

And just as suddenly as it started, it stopped. She gasped, catching her breath as she mopped sweat from her forehead. Her friends were standing around her, weapons drawn, ready to fight.

"WAID!" She slurred, alighting drunkenly to her feet. "Wait! Wait!" She took another second to catch her breath. "Its okay. I'm okay. It... I think it gave me something." She motioned for them to step back. "I think I can..."

She took a deep breath, and placed her fist to her mouth. She had never done this before, but it felt as if she had spent a lifetime practicing the motion. Her mind spun with calculations, rearranging the sweat glands on her hand into configurations she had never heard of. When she exhaled, a gout of pale vapor shot from her hand. The acid hissed as it came into contact with the air, filling it with an acrid chemical odor. 

There was a moment of awestruck silence before the mold shifted again.

"For the mechanical monk." The strange hand held out a length of metal. The sorcerer seemed to recognize it, and beeped excitedly. "A hard-light diagnostic tool, used by the engineers back when this place was still a city. It is damaged, but you can likely make more use of it than I."

The sorcerer bowed. 

"And now for you, my child." 

Nico visibly began to panic as a vaguely feminine, insectoid form was pushed from the moldering bed. 

"I would like to say goodbye."


	48. Ovum

From the rotten pulpy mass there pushed a shell. An empty vessel that at one point contained the being Nico called his hive saint. Even through the decomposition, the student could tell that she was made of the same strange chitin that served as Nico's false skin. 

In life she would have been tall, but not in the sense that Kali or the teacher were tall. The hive saint was stretched, her features a distended mixture of human and insect qualities. As she pulled her form from the mass, she unfurled a set of great wings, already frayed and useless in their rot-eaten state. Her chest came free. Then her belly. Then her hips. Then her hips. Then her hips. One after the other, segments of pale chitinous armor studded with sharp and powerful legs wrested themselves free, all covered with masses of scarlet mold. As her great centipedes abdomen snaked along the ground, arms hanging limp as the hair shrouding her face, she reared towards Nico. 

He cowered ever so slightly, hiding his mouth under his sleeve. 

In a ravaged whisper she spoke. "genua ante me descendit"

Nico seemed shocked out of his disquiet, and scrambled to his knees.

"et suscipe benedictionem"

Nico held out his hands. There was a chorus of hollow clicking and straining fiber as the hive saint bowed low over him, for a moment it seemed as if the grisly puppet were resisting its puppeteer, writhing against the bonds that held its form together. The saint gagged. There was a deluge of syrupy ichor as something was forced from her mouth, a long black shape that hung over the motionless boy. There was a quiet moment. The only sound in the room was Nico's muted chanting, his voice trembling. 

There was an explosion of motion. The saint roared, its voice unearthly and guttural. A crescendo of cracking and snapping as the saints form writhed, both of its arms seizing the shape jutting from its mouth, and with a single great wrenching motion, snapped it free, causing another deluge of ichor that fountained through the air as the holy corpse spasmed. There was a sucking sound like the draining of a great sink over which the hive saint keened, its voice full of desperation and need. "Niccolo! Niccolo!" It gagged, choking on its own rotting ichor as it was reclaimed, silenced, by the great cancer. 

Nico was silent. His face was a mixture of too many emotions. He sat up from his position, staring with what appeared to be disinterest at the black thing before him. There was a long pause.

The cancer spoke. "Take it or not, it is a part of you." 

This seemed to steel something in him. Now full of purpose, he reached out and took the black thing in his hands, holding it as if it were a serpent poised to bite at any moment. The travelers watched as he stood, held the thing aloft, and allowed the ichor to drip into his mouth. If it disquieted him at all, he did not show it. With a practiced motion, he flicked the thing clean as if it were a blade, slipped it into a loop on a belt he was not wearing, realized with a start that he made made a mistake, and simply held the thing carefully as he strode over to Kali, sat directly in her lap, and began to cry.

The rest of the group converged on him like comforting vultures. Kali made a motion that clearly meant "I know that was a lot but give him some space."

"Nico." She said. "Are you okay?"

"Its mine now." he sobbed. "Its mine." 

The teacher placed a gentle hand on his neck. He shuddered at the touch. "You're going into torpor" she said, "you must be exhausted." 

He nodded drunkenly, not taking his face out of Kali's collar. 

"Just rest now." Said Kali, taking a hand out of her rig to pet the back of his head. "It's okay." Several long minutes passed as nico's muffled crying slowed. Eventually, his breathing leveled as he entered torpor, his eyes glassy and restful. Kali gently shifted his position to keep his tears from melting a hole in her armor plating. 

"What the hell kind of gift was that?" Said Kali.

"I have given the child closure." Said the great cancer.

"You've traumatized him! Some fucking gift!" She responded, drawing looks of "we are begging you please do not chastize the god-eating tetratoma mold" from the teacher and student. 

"Do not mistake my charity for kindness." rumbled the cancer, teeth slowly piercing the ground beneath Kali. "I have little reason to hear criticism from arrogant mulch."

Kali sighed. "Sorry. I'm just upset that you scared my friend. You have been more than hospitable, but my mother taught me that a good host should respect their guests."

"Respect?" rolled the cancer. "I am all that rots and dies. The great gut of this dead citadel. I am gods and kings and priests and all that is worthy of worship."

"That's a big responsibility."

"hmm..." thrummed the cancer, mulling over some ineffable train of thought. The teeth seemed to recede slightly. "Interesting...Interesting indeed..." There was another gurgling rumble from beneath the mass as the cancer continued to ponder.

"Perhaps I have been rude. My feelings towards the child are erratic, strange. By way of apology, allow me to offer you a selection from the things I could not...digest." Empty armor components pushed themselves from the mass, all empty and cleaned of their occupants, the hung limply from branches of bone and mold like some grisly clothing store display.

Kali surveyed them, and shook her head. "Thank you, but I've got everything I need on my back."

"Hmmm...Very well." said the cancer. "How about this?" 

Before Kali, something that looked like a flower bloomed up from the false earth. In its center was a strange object. A bud of some sort, roughly the size of a human eye, made from what looked like thousands of tiny red mold filaments all condensed into a ball. 

"One of my spores. It contains a portion of my being. Consider it a gesture of goodwill."

"Thank you?"

"There are fearful, arrogant things in this place that are...hmmmm...bad at dying. Things that consider themselves beyond my touch. If a living thing, no matter how resilient, ingests this spore, I will ensure it finds its right and proper place among my rot. Use it wisely."

"Oh. Thank you."

"Which leaves you, Architect. However, I am afraid I have very little to give you."

The teacher's head rose. "You have given me mercy, I would not ask for anything more."

"Hmmmm...Is there truly nothing?"

The teacher thought for a long while. "I suppose," said the teacher, quieter. "Tell the children, the ones within you, that I am sorry. That I will do everything in my power to make this right."


	49. Verdant

And so the ruin breathed. 

The once-great halls and ducts of Teleth Thadeyn were motionless as the ruin sighed. The cold and sterile air of the upper levels pressed ever downwards, spilling into the deepest vaults as if they were ancient geothermal lungs. Heated by what feeble warmth the earth could still provide, it would again begin to rise, to struggle against the pressure of an atmosphere. Only by the morning light would this fragile equilibrium be broken. Only by the light of the misbegotten sun would teleth thadeyn be allowed to exhale. 

And so the ruin breathed.

The group sat, huddled in the ruins of what was once a humble town square. The western edge of the town had collapsed entirely, falling into the vast canyon the little camp overlooked. There had evidently been a leak several floors above. What started as a meager trickle of burning rain had etched a tiny hole into the concrete, widening it slowly over time until it formed the vast, churning waterfall that had carved this place. From this distance, the distant roar of the waterfall basin was no louder than the crackle of the peat fire at the center of camp, but the force of it was evident. 

This used to be farmland. Colossal boxes the size of skyscrapers, all carbonsteel bones and concrete flesh like the housing blocks below, UV lights embedded into their ceilings to provide optimized, mathematically perfect light to the crops that used to grow here. The rain had slowly eaten away at the supports, causing floor after floor to fall and smash into the ones below it. From the camp, the canyon stretched a kilometer below to the waterfall basin, and a kilometer above to the leaking ceiling.

It was lush. The entire canyon teemed with life. Overgrown crops in a bacchanal of mutation and growth, tempered against the acidic waters in flagrant mockery of concepts like "edibility" and "agriculture". From within the living carpet were spikes of pale necrovegetation, readily incorporating any sign of rot. The largest spikes bloomed with hundreds of colorless stolen flowers. Arboroids ruled any space not already overgrown, pulling themselves through the rocky and sodden soil, crushing any wayward sprouts. It reminded the student of home. She tried to keep her mind from wandering to anywhere she didn't want. Which was easier than usual. She found herself getting lost in the sights of this place. There were even organisms the student did not recognize. Strange things that seemed halfway between mold and arboroid, clinging to ceilings and pillars with sticky roots, slowly dragging their long ivy tendrils along the ground. Not even the automated gardeners were safe. The old agricultural drones ambled among the tide of life, hoes and scissor-blades dull from centuries of work, joints and augurs fighting for motion among a tangle of vines and roots. The student could tell their construction was very old, maybe even predating the city itself, she wondered how long they had been here, tending to this impossible garden. However long it was, their joints kept moving, the lights kept shining, and the oxygen pumps kept flowing. 

Kali breathed in time.

Shaft divers were not known for their subtlety. The main trait associated with the career, "idiotically brave and impossible to kill" was not one that lent itself to subtlety. Kali always took issue with that. It ignored the subtle parts of her work. She took another deep breath, feeling the gentle motion of the air. Of all the skills required of a shaft diver, this was one of the most subtle. 

If someone were to ask Kali if she knew anything about atmospheric science, or pressure differentials, or weather systems, she would look off to the side, wrack her brain, chew on her lip to help her think, and then say no. She would be wrong. Across four separate dives, she had spent a grand total of eleven months, three weeks, and six days exploring the ruins of Teleth Kazel. In that time, she learned how to read the cities pulse. 

She had learned that by paying careful attention to the temperature, pressure and direction of the air, she could map out the ruin. 

Her rig clock told her it was an hour past morning, and that she was roughly seven kilometers above sea level. The air tasted thin, warm, and breathable, with a slight ionized tinge. That meant one of two things. The good option, that the top of this next shaft had a power station, or the bad option, that the top of this shaft had a hull breach. 

"I have good news or bad news." She said, gathering the attention of her companions.

"I'd like the good news please." Said the student, her mouth half full of a highly poisonous gourd she had been roasting for the past hour.

"Statement: I would instead like the bad news." 

Nico, already tired of this bit, demonstrated his feelings by hissing.

"So. Either the top of this next shaft has a power station, or there's a hull breach. I can't say for sure which. Seeing that most of us need to breathe oxygen, a hull breach could be a problem."

Hearing this, the teacher snapped out of her meditative trance. "Kali, how high are we?"

"Uhh...rig says around 7.5km above sea level."

"I see. If my memory serves me correctly, we are approaching the city battlements." Kali nodded, pondering next steps. 

"Is that good?" asked the student.

Kali responded, but also seemed to be thinking out loud. "The level above us is the city garrison. The battlements sit on the outer edge of the city like a crown. They're where the cities heavy defenses are. At the center of the crown is the armory, and that's where we're headed."

"I'm hearing a but."

"The garrison, and the armory specifically, are the most heavily defended locations in this entire ruin. They're the last line of defense between heaven and the rest of the city. By starting at the edge and working our way to the center, we would be taking the longest possible route through one of the most dangerous parts of Teleth Thadeyn."

"I'm hearing another but."

"However, those defenses are usually pointed down. Trying to go up through the armory would be suicide. But going up through the battlements, and then in towards the armory might be less suicidal. If we could get in, we could probably find some extra rebreathers to solve the oxygen problem, but that would require actually getting inside. It all depends on what sort of state the old security forces are in. Depending on our luck, it could be anything from a single gen1 security walker, to an entire legion of specops knights like the one you encountered earlier."

"And we barely survived that. Got a nice new arm out of it though."

"And you barely survived tha-" Kali stopped, her eyes suddenly going distant. The student whipped her head around, hand on her hatchet, searching for the source of the danger.

"Kali? Whats wrong?"

There was a thunderous CLANG as Kali pounded a uranium-clad fist into her uranium-clad palm and said, "I have an idea. And a question." She said, pointing a finger at the sorcerer. "Sorcerer." 

"Prompt: Yes?"

"Did you take an image of that knights brain?"

"Statement: I did."

Kali pumped her hands in visible excitement. "Did any of you take any biological material from it? any sort of tissue?"

"I did." The student said, slapping her thigh. "Used some skin for a graft."

"Then we have the armor, the body, and the brain!" Said Kali, placing her hands on her hips with pride.

A moment passed. She realized everyone was staring at her. Nico specifically was making a motion as if to say "and what does that mean for us Kali?"

Catching it on the second bounce, she declared, "We can get past security! Ha!" 

She felt another tinge of pride as everyone made motions analogous to their eyebrows shooting up in surprise, as kali was in fact the only one in the group who had real eyebrows. 

"The automated security at least! Which means we are headed to the battlements!"


	50. Aesthetic

Nico had never been good with his hands. He wasn't meant to be good with his hands. He watched in fascination as the student set up camp, her right hand a dance of medical servos and milspec pneumatics as she tore strips of peat moss from a nearby wall, effortlessly peeling them away in long uninterrupted sheets with that practiced flick of the wrist he could never get right. She was explaining something to him. Something about moisture. Something about the exact shade of "brownish green" that identified the moss as ideal for burning. Nico was not listening. He was watching the spirals on her biosynthetic arm. He watched as the spirals twisted to her will, veins in her hand swelling and discoloring ever so slightly as her body catalyzed butane. He watched her control, her effortless, almost thoughtless control as her fingernails warped and hardened into conductive filament. He watched the tiny spark pass through her thumb and middle finger as she snapped the pilot light to life. He thought of his own hands. He thought of the thing wrapped in cloth he had carried from the deep places. He gripped his saint's gift tighter. 

"Student." He said, "Can I ask for your help with something?"

"Its Kali's turn to carry you next."

"No no, I need help making something."

"Oh. Sure, I can probably help. What do you need?"

"I need a belt. A belt with a scabbard to hold this." He gestured to the thing in his hands.

"Yeah, I can do that. Might take me a day or so, depending on the materials. Can I see it? I'll need the dimensions and weight." She held out her hand to take the thing.

The motion caused Nico to recoil slightly, gripping the thing to his chest as if it was a security blanket. For just a moment, his normal demeanor was gone. It was strange, the student thought. Nico had always played his part well, that mask of demure nobility. But the student knew predators. She knew the sharpness of his senses, the speed of his wings, the violence of his hunger. She was always acutely aware that beneath the snark and lithe muscle and baby blue eyes was something meant to rip and tear. 

But maybe even that was a veneer. Because in that moment, all the student could see was a scared child. 

Nico shook his head. "You shouldn't touch it, it might activate and try to digest you. Its okay though, I know the dimensions. It's 1.1 kilograms, 104 centimeters long, and 2.7 cm wide to its point, with a double fuller." 

"What sort of acid does it secrete?"

"Hydrochloric, with a mixture of halite salts."

The student took a deep breath. She was always getting custom requests from the knights back in Issin, and tried to recall all the information she had learned about which materials were good for what. "Okay, okay. Uhhh...Probably not going to find enough tantalum or zirconium, so looks like our best option is going to be a nickel alloy."

"Okay."

"Nico."

"Yeah?"

"Its obvious this is a touchy subject for you, but you have to tell me what that thing is."

Nico took a deep breath. "My lady. It's..."

\--

Nico was well educated. He was taught language and rhetoric, theology and verse. He was to be well spoken, but only when spoken to. He knew the holy word and he could recite entire books of it from memory. This was considered the bare minimum for one of his station in the church. His understanding of words paled in comparison to the scribes, who spent their days endlessly transcribing old ponderous tomes, and even the scribes paled in comparison to the high sycophants, endlessly arguing, churning in their great thoughts, refining their deepest understanding of the holy word. Nico was only an aesthetic. 

Aesthetic. Adjective, beautiful, or concerned with the nature or appreciation of beauty. Noun, a set of principles underlying the work of a particular piece of art or artistic movement. Nothing of substance. Nothing solid. All principles and natures and "appreciations of". Aesthetic was not a something, Nico thought, aesthetic was applied to somethings. It was extraneous, separate, immaterial. 

He was applied to the Lady of the Golden womb like a tapestry to a grand hall, like an earring to an ear. Always he would be at her side, kneeling upon his cushion in the great hall. He and his siblings placed so intentionally to frame the grand pontiff seat of his lady. As first aesthetic he was closest. Her favorite, situated just of her right flank, close enough to reach down and idly stroke his hair. Her hands were so gentle. How soft her touch, how warm her voice. Whispered praise of just how proud she was as she wiped gore off his cheek. 

"Niccolo." That was all it took. A trigger pulled. A latch released on the cage of something so so hungry. But it was never the hunger that spurred his wings. He was fed regularly and fed well. It was that the faster he moved, the more violently he ripped and tore, the more voraciously he devoured the fools who dared to draw the ire of his lady of the golden womb, the more proud she would be. The more gentle her touch, the more soft her words. There was love, but it was not the love of a mother for a child, Nico was not permitted such things. It was the love of a master for their pet. 

In the quiet hours of the night he would dream. Or, as close as his torpor half-dreams could get to a proper dream. On those nights, where that thing, stark and black, pushed itself from his lady's throat. On those nights where it pierced the gaps in his chitin, mixing blood and ichor and amnion and eggs that would never hatch, he would dream of those soft moments, of the sensation of fingers in his hair. How quickly the wound would heal. Only hours until he was beautiful again. How glorious it was to serve his lady like this. How quickly the pain would fade. What a blessing to be chosen for a duty such as this. How exalted he was. How lucky. How beautiful. How he wished he could grab the foul thing and snap it off. Fingers in his hair.

\--

"...her ovipositor."


	51. The Engine

The battlements of teleth thadeyn left quite a bit to the imagination. 

They adorned the city like a crown, a great balcony that curved ever so gently along the circumference of the city. Ever watchful over this throne of carbonsteel and decay. Most of the promenade was open to the sky, the ground built with a slight gradient, draining the burning rain into gutters that simply emptied it over the edge. The sky was closer here. The rain fell hard, but he hollow roar of the drainage gutters seemed to match the constant hissing wash of the rain. 

Regularly spaced along the walls were carbonsteel fortifications, their high ceilings vaulted in such a way as to part the burning rain before the doors of the gunnery nests. Here the ground was cut with decommissioned freight rails and broken elevators all marked with long-faded color-coded symbols that denoted what they carried. It was an impersonal place, yet it bore a quiet pride. Adorning the amber and matte-black were strokes of green. Creepers and vines reached from those old broken shafts, and with them came scattered blankets of moss and ivy. Furtive blooms in what must have been the spring heat, pressing themselves from every dent in the cities metal flesh, filling the space like scar tissue. 

If one looked down over the edge, they would see the world. They would see it crash against the impenetrable hide of Teleth Thadeyn like the sea. If one looked up, they would see the amber clouds. So close, they would think, to that blanket of burning death, and yet this place still stood. There was a sense of power here, of safety. This was the prow of the great ship of the old world, the citadel that would carve a wake through the burning sky. 

Then there were the guns. The guns. Their sheer size was mind-boggling, almost ridiculous. The student had made homes that could fit inside the shells fired by these titanic things. Hell, the student could probably fit three of her homes end-to-end into one of the colossal shells. 

They were all broken. 

Not broken like how the old shipping lines were broken, washed clean by the acid rain, melted through and corroded into a fragile and useless shell. Not broken like how the elevators were broken, pulleys and winches snapped under centuries of baring their counterweights. 

The guns had been destroyed. From the outside. 

The student recognized the damage. Metal warped into useless ashen slag. Her heart hammered in her chest as the memories came flooding back. Memories of chaos in the streets of Isin. Memories of a home harrowed. Every neuron in her body screamed at her. Begging her. "Run. Run and never come back." 

"Deep breath." She thought. "Get a hold of yourself." She took a deep breath, and got most of a hold on herself. 

"The guns were overgrown. The damage is old. The thing that caused the damage is probably long gone. There's nothing to eat here." 

\--

Camp was simple that night. Just some moss and a fire on one of the catwalks overlooking the battlements. From here, they would have a good view of anything approaching. Plus, the student liked to watch the rain. The student couldn't sleep.

It was exactly 45 minutes before sunrise when she heard it. That blast of static, that deep and echoing radar-pulse roar. The sound hit her like a bad memory, tears welled almost immediately. She knew she only had seconds to act. 

"Wake up! Everyone! Wake up! We have to hide!"

There was a sound like the sky tearing itself in two as something very large and very close decellerated through the transonic barrier. The travelers were shocked awake and were about to spring into action when they saw the student, lying facedown against the wall. She motioned with her head towards the battlement, and mouthed a single word. 

"Leviathan."

The fire was doused. They all held as still as they possibly could. Through a tiny hole in the metal, the student saw it.

There was a gust of wind as the leviathan hit its air brakes, great forewings beating to a stop as its jet turbines wound down. Slowly they folded onto its back as the rotors on the hindwings took control, lowering the gargantuan beast down upon the battlements. It resembled a cargo drake in the sense that a housecat resembles a lion. The idea that the two were even related seemed to the student like taxonomical hubris. Cargo drakes were said to be related to these things. They were bastard children, evolutions of some old military biomachine meant for carrying things from point A to point B with just enough self-awareness to defend themselves unprompted. Seeing a leviathan made it abundantly clear just how far from the tree that apple had fallen. 

In a surprisingly feline motion, it stretched. Its long tail straightened as the ailerons and rotor flexed. The missile pods along its spine blinked open and closed, warheads bristling in and out as its dorsal guns swiveled back and forth. From her perch, the student couldn't see the belly of the thing, but she could hear the chambers of its ventral guns spinning lazily in their mounts. 

It was a quadruped. Four enormous mechasynthetic limbs, rippling with hydraulic muscle, and terminating in high-oscillation axle-cutter talons that glowed orange from the sheer heat generated by their motion, turning the rain to steam. It was covered in what looked like armor, or skin, or scales, made of a tessellating pattern of living grey-green metal that shifted as it moved. Its head was highly optimized blend of features, evoking everything from predatory birds, to mammalian pack hunters, to old world war machines. It lacked any noticeable sensory organs, instead dominated by its colossal maw. Despite its tremendous mass there was an elegance to its motion, a wolflike grace, but also an arrogance. No, the student thought, not arrogance. Arrogance implied a false sense of importance. There was nothing false about the leviathan. It moved with the confidence of something that had never feared for its life. It was the apex of the apex, the final step, the final convergent evolution of everything that hunts and kills and rips and tears and bombs and fires and razes and wars. The Leviathans, The Engines of Calamity. 

It finished its post-hunt stretch, and began to wander away. Footfalls making far less noise than one would expect. It may have been a small blessing, but it was leaving in the direction the travelers had come from. 

So the student watched, and waited, and listened. 

What felt like an eternity passed.

When they finally rose, they did so silently, and moved as fast as they could while the daylight still held.


	52. Battalion

"Statement: This one. This is the one."

"Of course it is."

"Statement: I will need time to gain access."

It had been nearly four days on the battlements of Teleth Thadeyn. The gunnery nests were spaced apart such that it was nearly half an hours walk between each one. Each had a set of heavy bay doors that led to the armory within, and so far each one was impassable. Most had simply lost power. These were easy. The Sorcerer would simply plug their relay into one of the available sockets, pause for a moment, and shake their head. Some of them had power, but it was unreliable. These would make the lights on the sorcerers relay flicker as if they needed to be replaced. They would give it their best shot. Maybe if they worked quickly enough they could snap the airlock open before the power faltered. No dice. Though, they did get one to start moving, only to have the power fail moments later, slamming the doors closed like some huge maw. There was even one that had working power, but the door was so bent out of shape that it simply couldn't open anymore. The Student tried not to stare too long as the huge clawmarks in the metal. 

It was early morning when they found the entrance. Upon seeing it, Nico immediately started chattering about "hunter-gatherer symbology" and "emergent culture" but the student was personally more troubled by the hollowed-out bits of power armor strewn about. Even despite that, It was one of the nicer entrances. Easily in the top ten. Some little cut in the floor below provided enough space for a carpet of bright orange moss to move in. The student was wary of it, but by all accounts it was normal moss. No malevolent hungry gestalt intelligence or eusocial self-replicating swam ready to reanimate the discarded shells of fallen warriors and cut her friends to bits. It was, by all accounts, just ordinary moss. 

This relaxed the student more than she thought it would. It had been an exhausting few days. The constant threat of her friends being hunted by an apocalyptic war machine was a significant source of anxiety for her. She found herself sat upon the shell of an old warrior, taking in the little pocket of life. It was beautiful. Beautiful in an uncomplicated way. No defiant growth in the face of impossible odds or perverse appreciation of some perfect hunter-killer. It was just moss, existing as moss, doing all the things that moss should do. Through the holes in the walls, light would shine down on the orange mass, and where it fell grew furtive little buds. In an effort to keep her mind off the leviathan, the student picked one and brought it back to her new chair for inspection. It was no larger than a pea. A careful incision with a scalpel revealed petals of soft, pale blue. It stirred something deep in her. She had always liked that color. She thought it would look lovely against the moss. 

She had no way of knowing they were the color the sky used to be.

There was a yawn as the 3rd battalion of the 55th artillery regiment woke up. It groaned low as huge trunklike limbs pulled its tremendous weight to a bleary sitting position. Locks of shaggy bryophyte fibers swung as it turned its head to survey the intruders. The student shivered at the sight of its face, as if a hundred human heads were sculpted from wet clay and simply pressed into a vague head shape, all stitched together with rubbery orange moss in a nonsensical quilt of staring eyes and gaping mouths. It coughed, a wet and visceral sound that sent a shower of syrupy ichor in all directions from dozens of throats. The student was shocked back to her senses by the smell of ozone and burning lithium.

"Sorry!" It said. "I wasn't expecting guests. I'm not dressed."

There was a moment of stunned silence.

"Oh! An Architect! Please forgive us Mx, we did not expect a visit. Gods this is embarrassing." 

The huge thing lumbered to its feet and stomped over to a particular pile of scrap metal and discarded armor with a distinctly embarrassed demeanor. It located what appeared to be an empty combat mech body that had to have weighed around 2000 kilograms, and slipped it over its head like it was a tee-shirt. It repeated the process with additional mech components, donning a pair of makeshift boots and gauntlets, complete with a construction mech roll cage to serve as a helmet. 

After completing its apparel, it lumbered over to stand before the teacher. 

"55th artillery regiment, 3rd battalion, callsign 'cloudbreakers' reporting for duty Mx." It said, and slammed into a salute.

The student looked at the teacher, eyes wide, begging for some explanation. To which the teacher responded with That Grin.

"At ease. I'm not here on official business." She told the thing, importantly. "And its Miss if you please."

"Yes Miss. Sorry Miss."

"Do you have a name?"

"Well, officially we're the 55th Artillery Regiment, 3rd batallion, callsi-"

"How about unofficially?"

"Uh, Sorry Miss. Taun Kay. Our name is Taun Kay."

"The Teacher. Pleased to meet you." The Teacher reached up a hand to shake. "These are my companions. That's the Student. Over there is the Sorcerer. The big one is Kali and the little one is Nico."

Taun Kay reached down to accept, taking her weird slender rubbery hand gently their huge muscular bryophytal one. They used the other one to wave. "Hello everyone!"

This seemed to be a signal to come over and meet their new host. The sorcerer spoke up. 

"Statement: You are well spoken for one of your kind."

"Are we? I'm afraid we haven't ever met one of our kind."

Kali, who seemed to have been wondering the same thing, added "Yeah. Usually ogres are pretty dumb."

"Statement: And violent."

"And violent." Agreed Kali.

"Huh." Said Taun Kay, scratching what would have been their chin if they had one. "We wonder why?"

The student raised her hand. "You were a military battalion right? How many people are you?"

"Four hundred and nintey-two! Comrades all! Well, plus some bugs and stuff like that."

She nodded. "That's probably it then. Most of the time ogres are made of animal brains or shallow graves. They might be lucky to get two or three sentient minds, much less nearly five hundred, but even then the experience of being stitched together with a bunch of strangers and animals drives them mad." 

"Oh its not so bad being stitched together."

"Really?"

"It for sure took some getting used to. Wakin' up one day to find that 'You' are now a 'We'. Havin' the deepest parts of yourself laid completely bare, never sure if a memory is yours or someone elses. Suddenly feelin' all the good and bad things that happened to your friends as if they happened to you. We were already close when we were separate, but there ain't no secrets in this head anymore." 

Taun Kay paused, they seemed to be lost in thought for a moment.

"But every single one of us was a cloudbreaker, and we support our own. Thick or thin. We can't think of anyone else we would rather be."


	53. Morning on the Battlements

It was morning over Teleth Thadeyn. The light of a distant sun diffused through the amber clouds in rolling waves, painting the earth a deep red streaked with bare shafts of orange and gold. The rain fell hard that night, a rumbling torrent of sound and motion like the breathing of a great sleeping beast. By morning it had slowed to a trickle, the atmospheric roar reduced to a slow and rhythmic drip. 

The student was the first awake, she always was. Back home, she would use the morning hours to wander. It felt like she had a head start on the world, as if she was a step ahead. She didn't do much wandering anymore, or maybe she did? Maybe this entire venture was just one big wander. Even if it wasn't a wander, it didn't particularly bother her. She was perfectly content to look out over the sleeping forms of her friends and watch the world wake up. 

A bouquet of weather jellies floated by, fins flapping lazily in the gentle zephyr, little need to correct course. The students watched them as they drifted, even from this distance the light was low enough to see their tendrils spark as they caught some errant insect. Her eyes seemed to fix on the pilot. The little one out front of the larger pack, caught in the nose of the jetstream. She had heard about them. Some bored data-miner had chatted her ear off about it on the line to Isin. The pilot had the best senses. It would drift out to look for food and leave a pheromone trail behind for the rest of the bouquet to follow. The student always found that strange. Weather jellies didn't actually have much control over their movement, and were almost entirely at the mercy of the wind. They were efficient little creatures, barely alive by any standard, just sacks of helium with a mouth and an anus. The tendrils would harvest electrostatic energy from the air, and occasionally zap prey that came into contact. They didn't even have brains. Everything was instinct. Pure chemical reaction. Stimulus response. 

\---

Breakfast was simple. The agricultural block had allowed the travelers to stock up. The moss was easy enough to dry out and it caught a flame easily. Breakfast was a hollowed-out exo bracer full of bright-red nuts the size of eyeballs. She had wrapped them in leaves which she saved for Kali. Nico had successfully caught one of the strange biosynthetic ornithopters that roosted under the covered areas of the battlements. Kali insisted he not devour it immediately, lecturing him on the importance of eating together with friends. He pouted loudly, but acquiesced, although after a few minutes a puddle of drool had formed. The sorcerer had finished charging the night before, but sat by the fire and marveled at the cooking process, inquiring about how the student knew the nuts were done cooking if she had never eaten them before. Their questions were largely answered with shrugs. The teacher seemed largely concerned with coaxing Taun Kay over to eat. Eventually they relented, allowing themselves to be led by a rubbery hand over to the little fire. They apologized, saying they were already digesting several corpses over a period of centuries. This seemed to be their attempt to apologize for having already eaten. 

Breakfast was decent. The nuts were extremely salty with an edge of capsaicin, and the moss fire had given them a sort of earthy boiled-spinach taste. It wasn't great, but she had eaten worse. She thought the nuts would make a good seasoning. 

"Query: So, Taun Kay," The sorcerer asked, "how long have you been living here?"

"Oh, uhh...Few thousand years we suppose? We don't really need to eat much anymore. Just sunlight and the occasionally intruder."

Nico spoke up, temporarily folding his mandibles to form words. "Have you ever thought about traveling?"

"Gods no! We could never abandon our post!"

"Even with everyone gone?" Nico said, immediately tearing back into his meal. "Your CO ith probably long dead."

Taun Kay shook its huge head. "Its not about the brass. We took this post because this place is our home. We made an oath to protect our home."

The student cocked her head at this. "But the city is long dead, protect it from wha-" 

The realization hit her like a sentient biosynthetic war machine hitting a fortified factory-citadel.

"The Leviathan."

"Aye. The Leviathan." There was an anger in their voice, a deep and gurgling rage that spilled up and over into their words. "The damned beast took roost somewhere higher up the walls."

Nico spoke up again. "No offense but, what could y'all ever do against a beast like that?"

Taun Kay smiled with all of its mouths. Even in their warped and misshapen state there was a clear wistfulness to it, a remnant of bittersweet memories. It chuckled. "Ha! You should have seen this place in its prime! 'What's to be done?' I'll tell you what's to be done!" They swung a great limb to point at the broken artillery piece. "That's to be done! Or, it was. Most of the guns lost power ages ago. The ones that didn't have been torn up by the Leviathan." 

The student balked. "You mean that thing could kill the Leviathan?"

"Kill it? No, probably not. Their hide is too tough, heals too fast. But the guns can ground them."

"Really?"

"They're one of the only things that can. Guided projectiles get shot apart by their flank guns. Energy weapons either bounce off their force shielding or get absorbed entirely. The only thing that even fazes a Leviathan is Newtons first law, and even then they can detect electrical impulses, you gotta make sure the payload is traveling fast enough that they don't have time to dodge."

"Wait wait wait. So those aren't rockets?" The student pointed to the huge bullet-shaped things strewn around the room. "Those are shells?" 

Taun Kay became visibly excited at the prospect of getting to talk about the guns. More ichor dripped from their mouths. "Aye! 800 millimeters of ferrouranium. The guns are GACs. We call em slingshots. Same principal really. But the rock is real heavy and the rubber band is a gravity accelerator. Even then you gotta hit em in the head."

"Why the head?" asked Kali.

"At lower altitudes you can hit the wings, but this high up they can usually make repairs and regain control before they hit the ground. But the head is where all their sensitive telemetry is. It blinds them, stuns them. Forces them to fly by instruments and make an emergency crash landing, which usually hurts em even more. It also makes em mad, but that's for the hunting teams to deal with."

The student balked even harder than she was already balking. "Wait, you've taken one down before?"

Taun Kay gestured to the base of the gun. Cut into the metal was a series of hash marks. In all, there were thirty one. 

Their voice was low, distant. "We still have dreams, you know. Dreams of when this this place was beautiful and strong. You should have seen it. By the gods you should have seen it. A bastion against the dying world where everything was clean and safe and normal as normal could be. There was food, and good work, and and warm beds to sleep in, but it was more than that. There was love, and music, and dancing, there were sleepy little cafes and whole food stores just for pets! It was wonderful and daft and full of so much life. So much life. It was something worth defending. Every time we pulled that trigger it was a labor of love. We still dream of when these guns would sing."

Taun Lay looked as if they had lost their train of thought.

"That's why we stay here. All we have left are those dreams. If we were to leave this place while that beast still hunts and destroys as it likes, well, we don't think we would ever be able to forgive ourselves."


	54. The Armory

Cut into the armory walls was a design. Over and over again in a thousand overlapping hands. A sort of falling 'v' shape, depicting some great airborne shape descending low, talons crossed but outstretched. Nico had mentioned something about it earlier, but eventually his nervous academic chatter was reduced to that slow looping hymn. He was right though. There was something primordial about it. It had a simplicity, almost like a child's drawing, as if the hand that drew it was still attempting to fit what it had seen into representation. An attempt to take sight and sound and press them into the flat image. 

They felt almost like cave paintings, the footprints of a scared and furtive intelligence pulling itself from the mire of unthought. It made the armory feel old. Or, at least older than it actually was. The comparison wasn't entirely unfounded. The armory was built sturdy in a way the rest of the city was not. Everything below was built with that Bauhaus practicality, designed less by an architect and more by spreadsheets, all boxy spaces and tall pillars, built in megatons of material and shipping lanes and production capacities, unconcerned with west-facing windows or good neighborhoods. The armory was different. It was built efficient, built to be safe, built with that practiced military eye for necessity, all sloped trapezoids and lines of sight. There was something about the armory that felt safe. Maybe that's why it felt like a cave. Maybe there was something deep in their brains that told them this was a safe place to hide from the rain.

But the student knew better. She had been a trapper too long. She could see the signs. The trails through the dust, the little scraps of meat and bone. This place was far from empty. 

Power came in waves. The sorcerer was always the one to notice it first. A low, almost sub-sonic, hum through the wires. It would drag itself through the empty hallways like a blanket being pulled away from a sleeping child, sending the base blinking to life. The lights barely worked, bare filaments would glow as the power surged through them, creating illumination no more powerful than a candle flame. The old speaker system would cough to life, drooling incomprehensible messages about power loss and emergency evacuation routes to whoever would hear. 

Broken vehicles were everywhere. Old transport trolleys laid capsized where their rails had lost power and demagnetized. Construction mechs laid sprawled in the larger hallways, relieved of whatever burden they had carried, their exterior plating stripped, their insides long gutted for anything useful. All of it leaked the sticky black-green substance that had at one point filled their fuel tanks. Some old-world biofuel, an assemblage of slow-cooked petrochemicals and tailored algae that could regenerate itself when exposed to oxygen. It seemed to be everywhere. Dripping from cracked fuel tanks and clogging the drains fixed in the center of every room. It flowed thick and viscous, like a river in slow motion. The student didn't even need to check, whatever it was, it smelled very flammable. 

Eventually the group found their way to what had at one point been the mess hall. Kali noticed something that grabbed her attention.

"Look!" She gestured wildly, already dropping into a jog that was far too graceful for someone of her size.

She was headed for a full bank of vending machines. The lights were on, implying that they still worked.

"A full bank of vending machines! The lights are still on! That means they probably still work!"

She danced along the row of machines, the glass protecting the contents had been shattered, so she had an easy time reaching in and grabbing colorful packages with the expert certainty of someone who had done this before.

"Have you lot ever tried old-world food?" She said, holding out a baseball mitt sized hand full of garish packages in ancient languages. 

They all shook their heads, but didn't want to bring the mood down, so the ones that could eat reached out and took whichever thing looked tastiest. 

"It's bad, but like, in a good way. Does that make sense?"

"Statement: No. But I understand."

Nico stared, wide eyed, at the little foil packet in his hands. "This language...Its pre-reformation telite. By the mind I wish I could read it."

The teacher, mouth already full of something packaging and all, bent low over him: "Oh, its a mixture of english and spanish. It says 'Rueditos: Sour Cream and Onion flavor' I think Rueditos means 'little wheels' or something like that. Its not a real word. Looks like you got some sort of fried corn chip."

"What about mine?" Said the Student, already tearing open her package. 

The teacher snaked her body around to read the little bar of something. 

"It says 'Yukon Gold' I think its a bar of chocolate with caramel."

"Now me please! I can't believe I finally get to know what these things are called." Said Kali, who was practically shoveling one of the snacks into her mouth. 

"Lets see..." Said the teacher, taking the package in her hands, "It says 'Petardos! Explosive chili lime flavor' I think that means 'firecrackers' and it implies that the snacks contained within are very spicy."

"Wait wait let me try one" Said the student, kali gleefully obliged, tossing the student one of the little red dumpling-shaped things, which the student then bit into. 

"Hm!" She said "Yeah that's terrible! Gimme another."

"Right?" Said Kali, pouring a handful into the students hands. "Just soaked with preservatives and oil and salt."

"Its like eating spicy styrofoam, but I want more."

Nico, who had been quiet, finally spoke up, his eyes seemed locked on something very far away. "You can read pre-reformation Telite?"

The teacher, opening her mouth to swallow another bag of snacks whole, responded "Hm? Oh yeah, I can read and speak pretty much any old-world language. Mother taught all of us as many as she could. 'Arks of the old world' and all that. What you call 'pre-reformation telite' is actually a mix of several languages. English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Creole, and Portuguese. They all use the English script."

Nico sat down. Still staring off into the distance, he used an arm-scythe to slash open his package of sour cream and onion chips. 

"Query: You good bud?"

"Generations of study..." Nico said. "Entire monastic traditions...We fought entire wars over whether or not pre-reformation telite was one language or several...It was one of the major causes of the Great Schism of 10512...the theological implications alone are...and you just...Solved It...just like that...over a packet of chips..."

He tried a chip.

"...They're not even good chips..."


	55. Dreams of Flight

It hurt. It always hurt. 

The air rolled slow and stagnant through the armory, but today there was something on it. Something faint and warm. A tiny thread through the haze of sensation. A distraction from rest. An interruption to meditation. A terrible reminder. Again that old voice crackled through his mind. That hateful annoying little thing, all noise and sensation, no sense. "...Lance Corporal...report for duty..." Noise. So much damn noise. There was something on the wind. Gods, why did his heart feel so warm? There was something on the wind.

What was left of the corporal dragged himself to what was left of his feet. 

It had been millennia since he swallowed the levathine. He still remembers it sometimes. That horrible radio-static cry. The tiny shard of debris, such a little thing, barely bigger than a fingernail, blasted free from that impossible beast. He knew how valuable it was. He had heard the stories. He knew it was forbidden, but it was like his body reacted before his mind, wrapping the thing in a rag before anyone noticed. It was his. It just felt right, being so close to the thing. A good luck charm. Sure. A good luck charm. 

It was a comfort to him. Sometimes when he couldn't sleep he would take it from his pocket, so careful as to not let it touch his bare skin. He would watch the patterns dance. There was something so calming about it. So free. A whirling little dance of curves and fractals and repeating shapes. The higher-ups said that any piece of the beasts was alive, that every cell, every scale, carried some imprint of its terrible consciousness, but seeing it for himself, seeing it right in front of him, it was something deeper. It was something more true, more beautiful. "Alive" felt so reductive. It was a pattern, an unbreakable pattern. A synthetic engine responding to any and all stimulus. No, it wasn't just alive. It was...waiting. It was eternal, just impossible math running its course without fear of entropy, free of loss and pain and hunger and death.

He wasn't sleeping.

Could he be free? It would be so easy. The patterns used to remind him of the machines they used at waste disposal, all gnashing mechanical teeth ready to masticate unworthy things. There were bags under his eyes. Now the shifting patterns seemed to welcome him, to part before him like blades of soft grass. It was alive, that much he knew, but was it aware? Even in that tiny state? The thought made his heart swell. Was he worthy? Had it chosen him? Did it know him? Tears welled up in his eyes. After all these nights spent in quiet contemplation, in lonliness and fear, had it somehow learned that it was loved? If only he could forgo sleep, forgo this terrible war. If only he could spend every moment in meditation with this perfect and beautiful thing.

He was given the watch, the pre-morning shift. It was perfect. It was so, so perfect. He knew the perfect place. The gearbox for the decommissioned wind turbines. He would finally be alone. He pressed himself so tight into the space, the only light from bare cracks in the aluminum seams. He had just enough room to curl into a fetal position. So carefully he raised the shard to his lips. The old parts of himself felt like an echo, distant and muffled, but their noise and protestation would be gone before too long.

The moment it touched his tongue, it came to life. It burrowed like a parasite through his mouth, down through his tongue, shooting through his neck and chest like a bullet, until it came to rest in his heart. His dreams were full of rain and flight. 

\--

He was taller now. Much taller. As he rose to his nearly seven foot height his body cracked and strained with the effort. In a way, he still wore his old standard-issue armor. The Schmidt&co SCARAB mk-II, a light-grade exo, all mass-manufactured industrial plastic built more for utility than defense. It was infamously disposable. A cheap, replaceable, plastic coffin for cannon fodder. But now it was strong. It gripped the sergeants flesh, branded, warped and stretched into a biosynthetic hide of tough scales. Ancient pneumatics hissed meekly as the sergant stalked, carried now by lean synthetic muscle copy-pasted over and over again by the strange process that gripped him, that embraced him. It drew no distinction between man and material, just a rogue genetic protocol sculpting flesh and steel and plastic into a shape it deemed better. One arm groped at the sergeants head, a weak and atrophied thing that attempted to stroke a mane of hair that hadn't existed for centuries. A meaningless self-soothing habit from a less perfect time. The other dragged, scraped along the floor, a distended mass of sinew and scales that whined hungrily as the high-oscillation talons at its tip glowed to life in anticipation of a meal. 

They matched his new teeth, the ones that sprouted from his chin and collarbone, forming a maw more capable of satiating his deep and unending hunger. His eyes were black, nearly useless. It didn't matter. His old mouth watered at the taste on the wind. 

The wings were what hurt the most. He could feel them sprouting from his back, feel them being spliced together cell-by-cell as if grains of burning sand were being thrust from his flesh. It hurt so much. It wasn't the physical sensation. Pain was dull. It was barely a memory. A shadow dancing on the wall of the pathetic shape he used to be. It was the shame that hurt. Underneath the fog of sensation that was this body-in-between was the knowledge that he was not worthy of flight. The unmistakable truth, the terrible understanding that he was not perfect, that he could eat and eat and eat but it would change nothing. He was just too unbalanced, too fragile, too heavy to fly. Lucidity came in waves, and with it came the despair, the yearning, the need for the sky. There was almost nothing left of the sergeant, but every scrap of him wanted so desperately to fly that it hurt. It always hurt.

But when he ate, he would dream of flight.


	56. Seizing the sword

The leviathans were graceful creatures. Every square inch of them, every cell and sinew was constantly balanced and counterbalanced to move their tremendous weight as efficiently as possible. But there was something personal about how they moved, an intentional arrogance, as if the simple biological fact of their locomotion was chosen on purpose, blended like a fancy cocktail from those base-of-the-neck genetic memories of a time when there wasn't a name for the beasts that ate people. 

Whatever was charging at the travelers from down the dark hallway had none of that. They saw it in brief flashes, the Armory lights strobing in the faltering power, there was a sadness to it, a feral desperation that might have drawn pity from the student were it not for the all too familiar glow of its claws and teeth.

The student barked the alarm to her companions, but half of them were already moving to action. Behind her she could hear the symphony of chitinous cracking that marked Nico transforming, followed by the sound of a cooling fan spinning up, followed by Kali's kinetic wrench whining to life. No lithium flame, the air was still soaked in that old biofuel, better to keep from turning the place into a kiln. As the thing scrambled closer, the student began to notice that it was actually slower than she expected, but far, far larger. She had to time it right. There was a rhythm to its movement. Its legs hit in quick succession, followed by the distended right claw. It seemed to rely on the claw for balance, if she could hit it just before it landed, she could knock the thing onto its back. Deep breath. Focus. "You've got this." She thought to herself. "This is gonna be badass."

One-two three. One-two three. One-two three.

One-two three. She spun up the gravity ram in her arm, and made a fist.

One-two three. She adjusted her footing. She would need to jump. A right hook into the things pectoral. 

One-two Three. There! She leapt into the air, bouncing off her augmented shins, she was dead on.

The ram fired, space-time warped before her as her punch missed with devastating force. The thing had tripped, and was currently sliding on its belly, mouth-first, at her friends. The whiff sent the student spiraling sideways through the air, her drained arm flailed numbly as she got a really cool badass concussion from glancing her head into the wall. "Priorities." she thought. "First: Don't fall unconscious or we will die." Her HUD was flashing helpful information about how she may have experienced cranial trauma. "Second: Don't get eaten or we will die." Her biosynthetic arm was going haywire, ripples of horns and electric lights bubbled painfully through her skin as she struggled to maintain focus. "Third: We are in a lot of pain." Her heart hammered in her chest. "Conclusion: Let's sit this one out." She elected to prop herself up against the wall. 

The thing dove towards Nico, probably because he was the smallest, it swept its huge claw in a horizontal arc as its teeth snapped. Bad move on its part. Nico darted out of the way with space to spare, but there wasn't much Nico could do by way of counterattacking, the things hide was too tough for scythes and stingers. The student tried to form words, but her stomach decided it was actually time to try and vomit, so she abandoned the task. The world spun. "Focus." she thought. "They'll be okay without you." 

The thing seemed focused on Nico. As it scrambled to what was left of its feet, its belly glowed with a brilliant amber light. With what sounded like a hissing belch it spat a shower of what looked like molten metal into the air. Nico evaded the main mass, but the spray caught his wings. He yelped in pained surprise and dropped to the ground. "Shit." Student thought. "Nico isn't good at handling pain. He'll be easier to hit now. He needs to back off." Nico backed off, fluttering his wings to try and get the stuff off. The student grinned. The student's head throbbed. Strategizing helped her keep focus. "Kali should stun the thing, or at least keep its attention so miss can touch it and get a sense for its anatomy. It looks partially mechanical, so sorcerer might be able to puppet it, but that takes time, and would require Kali holding her own." 

There was a clang as Kali hit the thing in the temple with a thrust from her kinetic wrench. "Ooh, smart." Thought the student, trying not to vomit. "Using a thrust to approach its superior reach, nice." There was another clang as Kali hit the mark a second time. The thing reeled. The teacher was on it, fingers reaching towards its thigh as it drunkenly swatted at Kali. She touched it. Something was wrong. The student watched the teachers whole body shiver. She tried to pry her hand away but it seemed stuck to the things scales, the shifting fractal pattern creeping up her wrist. The teacher was panicking. "Shit." Thought the student. Kali went in for a third strike. The thing turned its head at the last second, huge maw snapping at the incoming warhead. It bore down on the kinetic wrench, teeth hissing as they sliced through the metal like a superheated high-oscillation knife through butter. It swallowed the weapon whole. Kali faltered. She was panicking. "Oh shit." Thought the student. There was a burst of scarlet flame as the teacher pried her hand away from the thing, waving her arm as if it were covered in some highly-infectious muck. Sparks flew. The room caught fire almost immediately. Someone screamed to run. It might have been the student. She could feel a mechanical shoulder lifting her by the armpit. "Statement: Stay conscious." There was a sensation like her cranial implants electrocuting her. "Fucking Ow!" Said the student, suddenly more lucid. "Statement: You are welcome." Said the sorcerer. The student felt a rubbery hand on her other shoulder. "Is she okay?" "Statement: Diagnostics report a concussion." "I can carry her." The student drunkenly waved an arm in protest. "I'm fine, I'm fine, I can carry myself." As if to make a point, she felt herself being slung over her teachers neck like a scarf. "Hush." Said the teacher to her new passenger. 

Kali was holding her own quite well. "Come on!" She bellowed, armored fists raised like a boxer. Swipe after swipe she ducked and bobbed and weaved, staying inside the things range of motion to keep it from landing a solid hit. She was in the zone, but the thing was relentless. The counterattacks didn't seem to be doing much, and they became less and less frequent as the thing gained footing. The room was getting hot. Kali was getting tired. There was a crunching sound. Kali had snapped the things knee. It buckled to the floor with a sobbing, static cry. In a fit of pain and rage it fell on Kali, its claw cutting clean through the soft flesh above her hip. She managed to stumble backwards out of the things range before she fell. 

The students head spun as the teacher galloped on all fours towards their toppled friend, pulling her to her feet. "Where's Nico?" She said. The teacher shook her head. "I need to stop your bleeding." Said the teacher, pressing a hand to the gash. Kali grit her teeth and closed her eyes, "Just do it. The rig will keep me upright. Help Nico." With a practiced motion, the teacher cauterized the wound shut. Kali winced and growled. The thing was already healing. "Nico! We need to go! Now!" It slowly teetered back to its full height, teeth and claws flickering to life with frustrated rage. It dragged itself towards the wounded trio, slogging inch by inch on an shattered limb that was becoming less shattered by the second. The room was getting unbearably hot. "Nico!" The thing reared, roaring as it lifted its distended claw to strike.

There was a blur from over the things shoulder. Nico dropped, rebounded from the floor, and shot upwards, burying the ovipositor in the roof of the things open mouth. He held for a count of three. The thing screamed, topping backwards as it writhed in agony, clawing wildly in an attempt to stave off the pain. 

Once the travelers were a good distance away, they took to the business of tending to wounds. None of them wanted to take their eyes off the thing. The sorcerer managed to remotely activate the sprinkler system. Now free from the threat of being cooked alive, the teacher tended to Kali's wounds. Nico stood guard. Never taking his eyes off the thing. The student was transfixed. Something about the way it twitched. Seeing the thing suffer made her stomach churn. An hour passed. It seemed like the twitching only got worse.

"Can we kill it faster?"

Nico shook his head. His hand seemed to grip the holstered ovipositor tighter.

"Nico."

Nico was silent. He seemed to know the question that was coming.

"What did you...you know...do to it?"

"Watch."

"Watch what? Nico, I don't-"

"Just watch."

She watched. She saw them.

Insects. Cruel little vespiforms, all barbs and mandibles, dripping acid amnion and venom, dug, burrowed their way from beneath the things skin. The student felt sick. One hummed its way over to Nico, who stretched out his hand. It alighted gently, pale little eyes drinking in a strange new world. Nico's antennae twitched, and the thing seemed to respond in kind. It waved its little pincers in his direction. Nico chuckled to himself, and stroked its little head with his thumb. 

"Hey there handsome." He said, his voice distant.

"All male." He said, to nobody in particular. "This little one is the king. Within twenty four hours there will be hundreds of thousands of them. They wont survive unless they eat. They won't eat unless I tell them to."

He continued petting the king. "I'm just going to let them starve. They wont feel a thing. They're built not to."

The king crawled over his hands. "I don't like using that thing. Nothing deserves to die like that."

\--

The student couldn't sleep that night. She couldn't remember when she picked up the shard. But her mechanical hand turned it over and over in the low light as she watched the patterns dance.


	57. The stone city

A body is a valuable thing. Surveyors stalked the stone forest beneath Teleth Thadeyn for corpses. Spindly metal wading birds three stories tall sweeping their floodlight eyes across the surface of a dry lakebed. All iron-sharp carbonsteel angles and lolling harpoon tongues they would search, following the scent of rot through the dust and acid petrichor. 

The student had been tracking this one for weeks. Surveyors were tall, loud things, easy enough to track by day or night. The trouble was staying hidden. Not from the surveyors, though they were trouble enough, but from the sky. 

It rained here and it rained hard. Come daybreak the clouds would break, flooding the valley basin nearly neck deep in burning rain. The surveyors seemed unconcerned by it, their carbonsteel bodies immune to its acid touch, but it meant that come daybreak shelter had to be found. Navigating was an agonizingly slow process. The little strips of red cloth with a weight at one end helped her find her path. She couldn't remember what they were called, but she was grateful to whatever mad souls had found these paths before her. 

The "camps" if they could be called that, were usually no more than raised overhangs in the wreckage of some old building. Occasionally they were only a hole cut into the fortified concrete, just barely big enough to curl up inside of while the rain fell. 

\--

There was a postal station at the head of the trail. A ramshackle of scrap metal and vehicle shells assembled into a sort of base camp. The Student had come to admire the postmen. Their stations were safe havens from the world outside. The amenities weren't great, little more than bare cots, but a cot was better than the ground, and they always had a doctor, a mechanic, and a pot of coffee on staff. Apparently it was a common place for shaft-divers to stop and prepare for excursions into the megacity. 

The Lidhot working the mess counter was missing an eye and a tail, the student had to ask. With that pointed monodelphic grin she launched into stories of adventure from their days as a shaft diver, how they maintained the trails into the city, the friends they'd made. When the student asked about navigating the trails to the city, the bravado faded a bit from her voice. As she spoke about the safe times to move and what things she needed and just how fast the surveyors tongues could move, the student noticed how many prayer candles sat on the bars back shelf. 

"You'll run out of food before you reach the city."

"I can fish."

"Uh uh, the lake drains too quick, aint no fish in there."

"What about foraging?"

"Its all necroveg, just barb nettles and lake briars."

"Is it even possible to get into the city?"

"Well, its a long shot, but I've got a trick-"

\--

The student placed herself in the path of the approaching surveyor, using every ounce of her concentration to keep her bodily functions as inactive as possible. She could hear the surveyors footsteps thumping closer. As the spotlights fell on her sprawled body, it made a hydraulic hoot sound that the student hoped meant "wow an undamaged body! Ill grab it using the tongues that aren't covered in serrated harpoon barbs!" and she was, fortunately, correct.

It carried her for nearly a mile, her head pounding with the concentration of playing dead. When it dropped her haphazardly into one of the body hoppers, she barely had enough energy to celebrate before she lost consciousness.


	58. Repairs

"Guys, really, I'm fine." Said the student, lying.

She was met with a harmony of "Shut up." and "Statement: Shut up." From her friends.

The air smelled like lithium flame and charred insect corpses. On the list of all the smells the student had encountered over her life, the smell wasn't even in the bottom half of the list. In fact it was almost pleasant. Sort of like a sanitized industrial winery full of charred apples. The students head throbbed.

She was sitting up, leaning against Kali as she performed repairs on her arm. Across from them sat the sorcerer, tangled in the braid of wires that connected them, their relay, the holotool they were using as a screen, and the small access port just under the students left ear. Every few seconds Kali would say something like "make a fist" or "extend two fingers" and watch something pop up on her helmet display. This was usually punctuated by the sorcerer adjusting something, which oftentimes caused a small but palpable jolt of electricity in the students brain. The student knew the routine far too well, she had done it hundreds of times on the pit crew. Neuromechanical diagnostics were slow work. The delicate connections between organic and artificial nerve tissue had to be checked by hand. Missing the wrong defect could lead to seizures, painful misfires, desycronization, or even death. The student hated this. 

"I hate this." She said, demonstrating her displeasure. "I'm fine. Really. Prove to me that I'm not fine."

The sorcerer held up the holographic display, reversing it to face the student. In clear letters it said "You have brain damage."

"Only a little bit!" She protested, the temporary excitement causing her brain damage to throb painfully. 

"You can't take hits like that anymore." Said Kali "You're lucky this prosthetic is old world medical-grade, most people don't get to walk off neuroprosthetic damage like that."

"I'm not walking anywhere." The student grumbled.

"No, you're not. And you know what I mean."

"I could do it myself."

"Oh sure you could, but are you really in a state to check all 200,000 nerve clusters by hand? Do you have two spare weeks? You're lucky you have a mechanic and a cognimancer who care about you."

"Statement: We do not enjoy seeing you in pain."

"You could stop electrocuting my brain then."

"Statement: I will not."

"You have to be more careful with your body."

"Easy for you to say! You're built like a tank!"

"Statement: Kali is correct."

"Same goes for you tin can!"

"Statement: I am made from an alloy of tungsten and aluminum. Addendum: I am vulnerable to the same neuromechanical damage you have currently sustained. My brain is still majority biological. Conclusion: You could learn a thing or two from me."

"Oh is that the solution? Trade myself out for a brain-case and and a life of swappable standardized parts?"

"Query: The only difference between our bodies is that your replacement parts are made of meat."

"Bullshit! Every replacement you make is one more step out of your body. That's the whole point, isn't it? You don't feel like I do. You don't rot like I do. Wrap it in all the 'transcendent' philosophy you want, you're still trying to escape your body."

"Statement: I never had a body. Every limb I had was toy. Every neuron in my skull, my sentience itself, all belonged to someone else. Query: Is it wrong to want to escape that?"

"No. Of course not. Just don't lecture me on respecting my body when you don't even want one." The student paused, looking down. "How could I respect something like this? I'm rotting, sorcerer. All the time. Every few days I have to peel off chunks of my own skin. The children of my strain learn to perform autografts by their seventh summer." 

Kali spoke up, "So?"

"What do you mean, 'so?' Every day I wake up to a body that sprints for the grave. You've seen me Kali, I'm held together with staples and stolen skin. I'm just borrowed time."

"We all are. Well, most of us are. But we all have things we need to do to keep borrowing that time. We all have to eat and sleep and bathe. You just have to replace your skin sometimes."

"That's not-" She stammered, "I-" She stammered, harder this time. "I... Ugh. You're right." The student sighed. "You are annoyingly wise sometimes, you know that?"

The student felt Kali's sternum shift as she shrugged.

"You're right... You're right! You're completely correct! But, why am I still frustrated?"

"Because you're tough. Tough people aren't supposed to need help. But they do."

"I don't feel tough."

"That's because we're helping you."

The student sighed, leaning her throbbing head against Kali's sternum. "I hate this."

"Yeah. If you want to avoid this, be more careful next time."

"Fine."


	59. Core Problem

"Statement: This is less than ideal." Said the sorcerer as they wandered the rubble of the elevator shaft. 

"Fucking goddammit" Shouted the student, kicking a small stone with surprising accuracy and the broken fusebox. 

Nico disapproved of her language, but not enough to actually say anything. 

Kali and the Teacher chatted feverishly about possible solutions, trying to pool their knowledge of megacity architecture.

The elevator to heaven was broken. All of them were. In fact, it seemed like everything in the aeronautics depot was broken. The entire flight deck was strewn with the shells of old mechanical flying machines. Ugly, inefficient things. Kali never understood why the old world was so keen on flying machines when there were perfectly good sailtails or helicranes to ride, but Kali had become quite accepting of the strangeness of the old world. Kali specifically was no stranger to broken elevators. Her profession was called shaft-diving for a reason, but the elevators to heaven were different. "Pressurized mechanical shuttles" she said, "impossible to repel up normally, no atmosphere to breathe." 

The heaven shuttles were spaced regularly around the great helix of carbonsteel that formed the spine of teleth thadeyn, standing flanked about its circumference like the pillars of an old temple. Kali slipped into the maintenance corridor below, flicking on her rig lights to cast an expert eye over the guts. They were massive, so large that if filled with earth and sod one could hold a joust inside them with room to spare. They were nicer than the shafts below, one of the cities most recent additions. It smelled like salt and ozone. Just as she thought. Gravity accelerators. Nice ones too, the late-model gyros that could do several directions at once. The elevators probably used them for stability as well as propulsion, the onboard computer making corrections if the payload shifted. There were mechanical parts too. Huge gears, taller than Kali was. Judging from the placement they could probably move the elevator in a pinch but much much more slowly. In all likelihood, they were just the breaking mechanism. None of it, not the gravity accelerators or the gears, would move without power. Which meant they were stuck.

"Bad news," she shouted to her friends, "We're stuck."

"How stuck?" Said a pair of scarlet eyes and a grin from the dark. 

After taking a moment to remember that thing was her friend and would not try to eat or maim her, Kali responded "Real stuck. These things ran out of emergency power a long time ago. Batteries are stone dead. If we're gonna get up to heaven, we need to fix the power."

"How possible is that?"

Kali's face went distant, recalling all the information she could about megacity power supplies. "Depends. Judging by the tech around this place, Im guessing a late-model thorium salt reactor, which I can probably fix, an algae cell reactor, which might be able to fix, or one of those crazy tessellated ion manifolds, which I can't fix. More than likely it's going to be a mark VI or a mark VII thorium-salt reactor, which shouldn't be a problem unless there's a core breach, but that's extremely unlikely on those models the salt coolant just solidifies and shuts the reactor down its actually a pretty brilliant design I wish we had the metallurgy to- "

"Kali." said the teacher, gently. 

"Sorry" said a sheepish Kali, "Uh, pretty possible. I give it a 50% chance."

"Thank you. You don't have to be sorry."

"I know I know. I'm just not used to doing dives with a team. I usually talk to myself while I work. Helps me think."

The teacher chuckled, "we have noticed!"

"If it bothers you, just say so."

"Oh nonsense. It's nice to know that people care so much about this place."

"I didn't realize you were so sentimental about it."

"I am not. I find this place ghastly. If I could melt every inch of this cursed hovel to slag, I would do so in a heartbeat."

"But you don't have a heart."

"Hush. You know what I meant."

"I'm not exactly a historian. Nico knows more about this place than I do."

"But you care. Just listen to the way you talk about this place. It excites you, interests you, captures your imagination."

"Hm. That makes sense."

"The old world made mistakes Kali. People like you give me hope."


	60. Battery

The plants here bled gasoline. 

Or, something very like gasoline. The roots that blanketed the halls of lower maintenance were thick and gnarled and black. Some ugly botanisynthetic stray from the agricultural block that climbed its way up the abandoned shafts in search of warmth. Blind worms burrowing for an earth they would never find. They reminded the student of the banyan trees from the glowing swamp, but with these things there was no pretense of photosynthesis. Whatever paradigm the roots now fell into, it sought heat, not light. 

The student couldn't help but wonder if they were intentional. She had heard stories of the old world birthing entire ecosystems, building whole economies of synthetic life, just to replace resources that had gone scarce. Whether their biology was twisted by some old intelligence or simply the endless march of time was immaterial. It didn't matter what the roots were. Because at the moment, they were simply very very annoying.

They sought heat. Which meant they clustered thick and tangled around the broken shell of the mark VII thorium salt reactor. The mark VII thorium salt reactor that had to be carefully inspected for core breaches. 

The student had been at it for hours. She was no stranger to bushwhacking. The motion was a deeply familiar one, ingrained deep into her body from a childhood spent navigating thick swamps. Her hatchet was even ideal for the work, each strike fell with the force and precision of a surgeon. She didn't even have to think. The task was downright mechanical. But there were just so. Fucking. Many. 

And it was messy. Her clothes were already drenched with synthetic oil, and were currently soaking in a bucket with some soap she looted from the janitors closet. Every stroke of the axe caused another arterial fountain of black ichor, but she was long past the point of caring. She was drenched in sweat and oil, yes, but it was far better than being drenched in blood and cerebrospinal fluid. Far better. Her breathing was heavy, but steady. She needed a break.

Nico hovered up to her. His job at the moment was to clear away the wood the student had chopped free, and was thus similarly stripped and soaked with oil. His holy robes apparently didn't come with undergarments, but it was easy enough to sew some rags into a pair of crude shorts. Shorts he had evidently improved with a belt made from electrical wiring. He handed the student a canteen and a rag, which she accepted. 

She sat down on the reactor and sighed, rolling her arms in their sockets one by one. Nico sat down next to her. Evidently it was break time.

She shouted to Kali, who was occupied tinkering with the guts of the reactor they were sitting on, but the rumble of the auxiliary generator drowned out her words. She thumped on the metal, which seemed to snap Kali out of whatever mechanical trance she was in. She emerged from beneath the reactor in a cloud of curly black hair. The student waved, and tossed her the canteen. Kali spoke up to them in sign language. The student knew the common signs for "finally" and "finished" but Kali had included a third gesture she didn't recognize. Nico, also in sign, explained it was a swear word from the Burning Horde dialect. The student responded by signing that he was a swollen brained nerd. Nico stuck out his proboscis and mockingly hissed at her.

The teacher and the sorcerer were huddled over the controls on the upper level. The sorcerer was plugged in to the electronics, slowly expanding their will over the ancient control software. The teacher was reading the user manual, turning dials and switches on the panel and feeding information to the sorcerer. 

Kali gave a thumbs up.

The student nodded, and gave a thumbs up. She tapped Nico, who hovered up to the window on the upper level, and gave a thumbs up. 

The sorcerer and teacher both gave thumbs up. This was it. 

The oil-sodden trio scrambled away from the reactor as the sorcerer held up their hand for a count of five. 

Four. 

Three. 

Two. 

One. 

The reactor growled to life. There was a hissing, cracking sound as the salt went molten, creeping, then flowing through the old turbine channels. Lights that hadn't received power in millennia suddenly glowed to life, most exploded out of their filaments. They had done it.

\-- 

Miles away, on the very edge of Teleth Thadeyn, Taun Kay was pulled from slumber by a sound they never thought they would hear again.

It was a low whine, so low as to be almost sub-sonic. The sound of magnetic augurs priming into the ready position. At first they truly didn't believe it. It was a sound they had heard so many times in their dreams. It simply wasn't possible. It couldn't be real. But there before them was the proof. The gun was priming. 

They spoke to nobody. Their voices a mixture of awe and disbelief, growing slowly into confidence, then outright elation. "They've done it. By the gods they've actually done it. We can't believe they've actually done it!"

There was a radio-static roar in the distance.

Taun Kay laughed as they lifted the massive gun from its mount, hyphae slipping over the controls, eyes sprouting from the mass of fungal flesh to peer into the sights. The 3rd Battalion of the 55th artillery regiment took up its arms and bellowed to the wind. 

"Hear us you pest! You vermin! You arrogant worm! Hear us! For too long have the guns of Teleth Thadeyn been silent!"

They drew a bead on the leviathan. There was a chorus of whirring as every functioning gun on the wall swiveled into place. 

"Now hear them sing!"


	61. Above the World

Here was the prow of the ship that parts the sky, the nail on the finger of a dead god, the gilded abattoir of the old and holy. The elevator to heaven was heavy and slow. They had all heard the stories.

To the people of the glowing swamp, they were evil spirits. The creatures that flew above the river of dreams between this world and the next. The things that dove from the clouds like lightning to the black and shining water to drag the unworthy to a place neither alive nor dead. Not quite an old wives tale, but something from the mind of an imaginative lore-keeper. A parable that taught the young to keep away from the rivers at night when the harpoon eels hunted. But harpoon eels didn't have wings, didn't have eyes. 

To the high sycophants they were a piece of beautiful theology. The butterflies that circled the world, defining it, giving it shape. In their wisdom god said "here shall be your plot in my garden, tend to it well, concern yourself not with what lies beyond." Within these bounds is the world made for us. Any who by arrogance or greed attempted to stray from this lush eden into the void beyond of physical and spiritual nothingness, would find mercy on the end of a proboscis. 

To the monks of the process, they were demons. The things that scratched and clawed at the satellites of pure thought, tapping and scraping with a thousand long nails on the great transmitters. They were distraction incarnate, representations of everything that must be tuned out, relinquished, if one wished to reach transcendence. They were sad and hungry things, but not for food, for stimulation. They were a joke. A snide remark towards those who obsessed with petty things, addicting themselves to distraction. 

To the burning horde they were a wary topic. A campfire story, seldom told. Sure there had always been stories of things that lived beyond the clouds. Things that breathed nothing and ate everything. Stories from other places. Tales of foreign gods. Someone would always bring up a great-grandmother who saw one fall from the sky, speaking in hushed tones about how it crashed just over the wall into winter superior. How shapes in the night converged to haul its body away. Nobody ever knows where. Kali had her suspicions. There were shaft divers who reported their existence as fact. But they were always too fast to see, too far away. A blurry image on a camera or a corrupted audio recording.

The teacher was arranging crates so she could not be seen from the windows. 

The others followed suit without a word. It would take nearly two days to reach heaven, plenty of time to ask questions, best to get comfortable. 

It was a routine by now. Student had five days worth of food in smoked meat and weird gourds. Nico had filled up on recyclers before they left, but that would only last him a day, so the student would use one of her days to synthesize a meal for Nico. The sorcerer had a stable power supply on the elevator and Kali had an external cell in case of an emergency. Kali was still full from the agricultural block. She had nearly four days worth of dried herbs, plus a days cud, plus the plant waste from the students meal. If heaven turned out to be completely barren, they could at least make it back down the elevator before they completely starved. 

The elevator was large, strewn with debris from its days of use and there was plenty to assemble into a camp. The tall cabinet-style crates were arranged in a crude semicircle and used as supports for the plastic tenting Nico had found. The rain wouldn't be a problem, but visibility would be. There was work that needed doing. Kali's rig needed maintenance and the students arm needed fine-tuning. A crude workbench was assembled from a pair of field desks and a door pried off its hinges. There were some mechanic stools strewn about, but their wheels had long rusted. Surprisingly, they still worked as a thing one could sit on, and were quickly put to work. The sorcerer gutted the floor paneling, applying all sorts of cables and relays to alchemize the raw current into something that would recharge the groups various batteries. The student readied some clean water and gauze for preparing a graft. 

They decided to start the elevator after they were ready for the night. Evening wore on.

Nico and the student practiced fencing as Kali made the final preparations, something to get their mind off the gravity of their destination. Soon enough, exhaustion set in. Kali threw the switch. The elevator glided into almost imperceptible motion on a cushion of artificial gravity, smooth and elegant as tea leaves rising to the surface. The augurs settled into a muted hum, its steady rumble a soft cello call to sleep.

The oil-sodden roots from below made nigh-perfect firewood if they were chopped into even chunks, but the elevator itself was hermetically sealed, lighting a fire was likely not the best idea. Instead, the sleeping arrangements were grouped together for warmth. Kali had already proved her ability for sleeping just about anywhere, but she was grateful for some plastic sheeting that could be assembled into padding for her bedroll, this had a knock-on effect to Nico and the students evolved practice of using Kali as a bed. The sorcerers body was not strictly as comfortable, but it generated a noticeable amount of heat when they charged, and was thus placed as close as possible. The teacher sat at the edge, encircling the ensemble with her legs.

In a days time they would break the clouds.


	62. Higher the World Climbs

Higher, higher, and higher the world climbed. 

Reaching, grasping, clawing for a breath of fresh air. Pressing its muzzle blind through the amber clouds, searching for a pocket of sky that did not burn its lungs. Ever upward it fled. Building tower upon failed tower, an endless game of planning and reinforcement as the ever-spiraling horn of Teleth Thadeyn drilled itself into the vault of the heavens. And so did the heavens bleed.

The sub orbitals were the save haven from everything below. The crown upon the brow of Teleth Thadeyn where none of the old and hungry below could climb. Ten thousand grasping hands at a diadem too high to reach. This place was safe. Built to be the final resting place. A sulf-supporting sealed box where the old world could never ever reach. Where power and time and flesh would be preserved, treated with all the gentle care the old world could muster. Let the pale hungry things below starve. Let them wait it out. It could only be a matter of time. Just a matter of time.

Heaven was desolate. All alleys of fashionable bespoke apartments flanking broad avenues, shin-deep with ash and dust. Every home was adorned with what appeared to be hand-made carvings. Intricate filigree decked in gold, faded and dull under untold years of dust. Lampposts cast the grey dunes in a pale artificial light, their bulbs strong and confident among the disrepair. Moving here was slow, each legfall an effort.

In the cities prime this was a place of dreams. A colony for the powerful and talented, maintained by the finest anything that could be bought. Expert craftsmen and high-precision machinery in all things. Every labor one of love. Every job worth the money. It was meant to be sealed. Few had ever successfully ventured this high. Even the shaft divers rarely returned. Things in the megacities had a tendency to collect downwards, pulled ever lower by gravity and rain. The havens were sealed. They were almost entirely untouched, and many believed they should stay so. If the things that build the megacities wished to lock themselves away, who are we to break the seal?

This was the reliquary to the old gods. The ones that bathed the world in burning rain.

Flee from a world drowning in itself, cling to the highest mountaintops and when they too begin to grow sodden and acrid, build higher. Carry what you can or command those loyal to do so in your place. Build a safe haven away from the fear and death, nestled in the gentle embrace of the void. Challenge the stars themselves if need be. Anything to live. Anything to let your children live. Anything to preserve the world as it is, in all its beauty and splendor. Anything to hold on. 

Things rarely made their way up the high shafts. Most crashed against the armory and its sleeping spears. Those who made it past would find only a bridge locked from the other side, and none could make the climb themselves. Those who tried to scale the outside, to fly or climb the outer shell of teleth thadeyn, would vanish. Tales of things that hunt above the clouds. Pale Hungry things that tap tap tapped on the outer shell of heaven, probing its skin for anything warm enough to eat.

Here was the old world, ensconced in gold and formaldehyde. Over time the gold lost its luster. The artificial sun lost its shine. Here was the eternal twilight of what came before. A sun that would never set. Even the husks here were beautiful. Rotting plastic flesh and unfurnished aluminum replaced with artisanal porcelain inlaid with etchings of flowers and seasides, flesh bioweave interlaced with fine synthetic velvet in deepest scarlet. No empty cavern eyes or gaping filter-choked jaws, only featureless porcelain faces. Their movements furtive and quick, hobbling from sight whenever the travelers approached, each clutching something in their hands, ragged dusters or bits of chipped china, gripped tight as if it were the most precious thing they ever held.

Heaven was a circle. Rings upon rings of neighborhoods and shops, and towering above it all was the administration building. A building stark and white, an almost alien mix of gothic elegance and brutalist utility, like a great cathedral to a god of concrete and paperwork. It rose from the hill of heaven, its steeples meeting in the center with its twin, suspended upside down from the sky itself. The road to its base was a spiral of gunnery towers and snipers nests. It was a place that radiated strength. A place that, by the sheer fact of its existence, commanded dominance. Even from this distance, the rotors of the security gargoyles could be heard. This was no dead shell. This was a place bustling with activity, a place that was defended. Which, fortunately or unfortunately, meant it contained something worth defending.


	63. Simulacra

Four cairns hung from the exit of the freight dock. 

There was a sense of quiet reverence as she fashioned a fifth, and hung it from the hole in the metal door frame. "They look old." She said. "Its been a long time since anyone has made it this far." 

"How long?" Asked the student.

"Well, the most recent one seems to be only a few months old. If sorcerer's master made it this far, I reckon that was him." The news drew a beep of guarded excitement from the sorcerer.

"And the others?" Asked the teacher.

"Ancient. I cant really tell how old they are. Two are at least several centuries old, and one is at least a millennium."

Kali remarked that this was quite strange, as near to where the cairns hung, was a symbol melted into the wall. It resembled a capital letter 'H' yet flared at the top. Kali went on to explain that this was the shaft diver symbol for "camp." Upon receiving blank looks from her compatriots, she explained that meant a camp in the sense that it was supposedly still being maintained. That there was a chance another shaft diver still living in this place. She said all of this with apprehension. She said it was likely that whoever made this camp sign was simply trapped here, and had survived as long as they could, but were probably long dead. She didn't want to get everyone's hopes up, but they collectively decided to check it out anyway. A camp meant food and a place to sleep. 

\--

The freight depot sat on the perimeter of heaven. The whole city sat as if on a circular disk, balanced within the sealed vault of the false sky. Water seemed to flow from the center, forming elegant artificial canals that flowed out and over the edge, pooling in some reservoir beneath them only to be pumped back up like a fountain. The water was cloudy and grey, choked by the gentle yet constant snowfall of ash and dust. 

None of the travelers had any way of knowing the outer limits of heaven were a mimic. A garish simulacra of a picturesque lakeside or tourist-trap beachfront. The beach sand was grey, as was the water. There was no cover, and beachfront activities were few and far between, so they stuck to the shopfronts as they moved, hoping to avoid the attention of whatever still patrolled this place. 

The path lead the travelers to a sort of pier with a small building at the end. It was broad, wide enough for two lanes of trucks with plenty of space for pedestrians on either side. Initially, it appeared to be wood, but upon closer inspection was found to be carefully molded metal. Along the sides were elegant benches and discarded equipment for fishing that looked as if it had not been touched in decades. 

The building turned out to be a cafe. There was a brushed-steel bar and a rusting soda fountain. Barstools and booths capped with red synthetic leather laud out in neat efficient fashion. A chalkboard baring the days specials that hadn't been made in centuries, illegible and faded. It was sleek, all chrome and smooth curves meant to evoke some ancient idea of the future. Carbonsteel walls pretended to be concrete, synthetic clear sapphire pretended to be glass. It felt fake, because it was. Another simulacra of a thing that never really existed. Out in the courtyard, a husk sat, curled among the tattered umbrellas and faded tables. It was curled into a fetal position and half-buried in the ash, staring with eyes that had been cut out centuries ago for a sun that would never rise. Above the gentle sound of the ash the travelers could hear a gentle tapping as it clutched at its neck, grasping for a hand-knit scarf that had rotted a lifetime away, the ghost of a memory of a self-soothing impulse left over from an almost-perfect lobotomy. The sorcerer took the time to switch it off manually. 

The back room of the cafe, nestled among old crates that had been long stripped of anything useful, was a maintenance hatch. Emblazoned on the wall was another camp symbol. The student went first. 

At the bottom was a hallway. In front of the only door was a figure, its face obscured by a broad-brimmed hat, its armored hand balanced on the hilt of a flashcutter. It spoke with a strange hitch to its voice, as if it had not spoken in a long, long time.

"Were you followed?"

"No."

"Then come inside. It is nearly time for breakfast."


	64. Tea

It is rare that an offer for tea evokes awe. 

But the group was stunned. Every single one of them was expecting a corpse. Some old-world body holed up in a bunker who suffocated and starved a thousand years ago. But the warrior was making their way over to a charming little table where an equally charming clay teapot was waiting. 

The little home was humble, but extremely cozy. Everything seemed to be made entirely by hand, bereft of any sort of old-world salvage. The floor was covered with thick uniform rugs, hand-woven from some synthetic material, each adorned with equally hand-made cushions for seating. To the right was a series of curtains that cordoned off the bathroom, towards the back was another set of screens and curtains that divided the bedroom from the living area. The curtain was currently open, revealing a cot and a pile of neatly folded blankets. The kitchen was made from a pair of clay ovens, atop which were metal plates that served as a stove. Makeshift shelving was adorned with salvaged boxes and cans each customized with a hand-painted image of what they now contained. Across from the kitchen was a sturdy folding desk, beside it was a case of pigments and brushes, complete with a bouquet of rolled paper. This explained the armor. 

Kali could not take her eyes off their armor. It was beautiful. It was a work of art. It was all overlapping interlocking plates of umber metal, sloped where it needed to deflect projectiles and curved where it needed to deflect blows. As the warriors moved through the routine of making tea, the plates shifted, retracting and shifting and revealing not a square inch of skin. And all of it was painted. Every individual plate was a different scene. On the smaller plates, flowers bloomed and birds took flight. On the larger plates, the sun set behind mountains shrouded in mist, vulpids danced through azure forests, young women sat by placid lakes. On the shoulder blades was a great meadow where two armies clashed, banners stained red, and upon the warriors face, a great wave crashed. All painted in a deft and subtle hand. 

"Drink, or do not." They said. "That is, if you can drink tea?" Their voice was odd, and seemed to straddle the boundary between organic and artificial. 

The group suddenly realized that none of them had moved. Even the teacher seemed stunned. The student had learned to let her do the talking in these situations, but it seemed she was at a loss as well. Looks like it was up to her.

"Uh, yes, thank you. Tea would be great. Uh. If you're making food, I can eat cooked meat and most fruits and vegetables, the big one eats most plant matter, the little one eats raw meat, the metal one eats electricity, and the tall one doesn't eat at all."

The warrior nodded, placing several teacups on the table. "Please, sit. There are some cable braids to your right. They should all reach the table. I have L6, HV13, and HFG/B. I hope this is sufficient."

"Statement: That will be perfect. Thank you."

The warrior was a flurry of action. Their limbs moved with clearly inhuman speed and precision, but there was an elegance to it. Mechanically augmented movements always had a sort of halting rhythm to them. The limiters were hard-wired as not to literally rip the wearers muscles and joints apart. The warrior flowed. It was mesmerizing.

"I suspect you have questions." 

Several people tried to talk at once. Kali, who had practically been vibrating with the symplegadian efforts of wanting to ask thirty different questions and wanting to be polite, managed to come out on top by asking about a decibel louder than was probably appropriate. "How long have you been here? How have you survived? What model is your armor? Who are you!?"

"How about a question for a question?" Said the warrior, still focused on the vegetables they were chopping. "My name is Breaking Wave. What are yours?"

Introductions were made quickly, it helped to diffuse the tension.

"How long have you been here?" Asked Kali, still sheepish.

"Nearly twenty-five centuries now." 

"How on earth have you survived?" Asked the teacher.

"Ah. A good question. It will answer many others. But a story should never be told on an empty stomach." Breakfast is ready.

Breakfast was rare, in that it was delicious. Steamed river grasses and cloned vegetables (three helpings for Kali), seared flanks of some weird yellow fish (a whole bowl, raw, for Nico), and bowls of soup made with chunks of synthetic meat and more river grass that smelled like the ocean and tasted like home. 

"I was not born. I was grown. Pruned like a young sapling by the monks of The Process. At the age of 12 I was sold to a nobleman of house Illyr, and added to their ranks of warriors. We were insurance. Guards for any of noble status who joined the caravans on the Sunset Road. It was an excellent job. I was tailor made for it, and took great pride in my work."

There was a pause. Breaking Wave's face was obscured by the painting that bore their name.

"We were attacked by a leviathan. I lost everything. I failed to protect my compatriots. I failed to defend my lord. I could not return home, for I had no home to return to. So I continued east, following the path of destruction the beast left in its wake. I learned to hunt them. How to kill them. I learned where they roost. That is when I found this place, and the old gods."

The student, despite her best efforts, was feeling an emotion.

"I serve Cyrus the Encrypted, lord of secrets and ciphers. I watch over this heaven to ensure the secrets of the old gods stay buried."

Breaking Wave made no move towards intimidation, but it was as if the temperature in the room dropped 10 degrees. 

"Now tell me. Why have you come to this heaven?"


	65. Secrets

All nine remaining eyes fell on the teacher. She had been the liaison to emissaries of the old gods so far, and it was, and it was in fact her business they they had entered this heaven on. However, it seemed something was off. The teacher gazed at Breaking Wave, calculating, her face implacable. There was a quiet moment as she regarded the warrior, scarlet eyes unblinking, focused lazily on their beautify painted helmet. When she spoke, there was a hint of that melodrama to her voice. 

"You have been most gracious. I thank you sincerely for the hospitality you shave shown my companions. I know better than to offer information freely to one of your creed, and you should know better than to treat me as some lost lamb. I was not born yesterday."

The student was suddenly very aware of the flash-cutter on Breaking Wave's hip. It was an antique. An early type of plasma weapon with almost no mag-containment on the blade, capable of projecting a ridiculously high-energy cutting edge, but only for a split second.

"How fast can you conjure a lithium flame, architect?"

"Fast enough."

"I wonder if you could do it without catching your companions in the blast."

"My cytoplasm is a complex lithium phosphate. If you so much as scratch me with that flash-cutter, the explosion would turn this entire boardwalk into slag."

"If my lord wishes it, so shall it be. The Encrypted Prince holds no enmity for Model Zero Matriarch, but I cannot allow one of her children to pass through our domain unquestioned. I ask you once more. Why have you come to this heaven?"

"No enmity you say?" The teacher thought for a moment, never taking her eyes off Breaking Wave. "An exchange then. I will tell you my business here, but first, I need to know your lords relationship to my mother. I need not know of his motivations or plans, only the state of any potential alliance or "

Breaking Wave did not move. Nothing in their posture changed, but the tension in the room lessened slightly. They were quiet. The only sound the gentle crackle of the embers in the oven.

"My lord is intruded. Your exchange is accepted, architect."

The tension in the room relaxed from Anticipation of Incredible Violence down to General Wariness and Distrust. Breaking Wave straightened slightly.

"My lord holds no enmity, but also no love for Model Zero Matriarch. He prefers to stay neutral in his dealings with other the other gods, and the matriarch is no exception. He has no dealings with her other than the Concord as divine secret-keeper. He thanks you for your cooperation, but also wishes to remind our guests that his vassal can tell if they are lying."

The teacher nodded, her voice plain, as if someone had asked her for directions.

"Two reasons. My companion has come seeking their master, who has likely ventured into the server vaults. I have come seeking an administrative override key. My goal is to unlock the cradle, and kill my mother. I no longer wish to be complicit."

Breaking Wave was silent, be it from shock or contemplation. 

"Tis a grave sin, to raise one's hand against a god." They said, their voice low. "But perhaps a necessary one. The matriarch has been lost for quite some time, and the tide of horrors from her womb has been...troublesome." Breaking Wave took a slow breath. They swirled the cup of tea in their hands, still full, as they had not removed their helmet. 

"My lord cannot approve of this venture, but will also not hinder you in its execution, as it were. You are free to stay here, I will provide what accommodations I can, as well as advice on navigating this heaven, but nothing more."

"Thank you."

Breaking wave bowed their head. Again they spoke, this time without the formality of speaking for their lord. "To that end: A word of advice. A sorcerer passed through here a year or so ago, also asking about the city server vaults."

"Query: My master was here?"

"In all likelyhood, he is dead. Do not go looking for him."

There came a flurry of grating electronic sounds from the sorcerer. 

"I say this to spare you. The domain of my lord is the infosecurity complex. The server vaults below are ruled by something else. I can tell you nothing more."

"Query: Why should we trust you?"

"I am vassal to the god of secrets. You should not trust me. But you should listen."


	66. exquisite sarcophagi

The student could not sleep.

Nights in heaven were warm. There was no need for a fire. The stagnant and air twinkled like stars as what feeble light there was reflected off motes of falling dust. It was beautiful, but beautiful in a sterile way. She could taste no microbes on the wind. Heaven was a hermetically sealed snowglobe, an endlessly recycling current choking on flakes of dirt and dead skin endlessly coughing choking towards the false sky. 

The scale in her hands did not sing to her like she expected it to. She knew the risks when she picked it up. She had heard the stories. But it was as if she simply had no choice in the matter. No compulsion or strange hypnotism, just what felt deep in her bones like the natural thing to do. She watched the fractal patterns shift as the dust fell upon it. Hungrily twisting and shifting, sucking like a sponge on what fragments of life touched its venus-flytrap surface. She hated the thing. It was a tiny shard of everything she hated about this world. A literal microcosm of the wanton meaningless destruction that toppled her life over and over and over again. Yet, here she held it in her hands. She turned it over in her palm easily as if it were a stone. It was solid, real, tangible. She wondered if it knew her as well as she knew it. 

The scale felt like the most real thing in her life right now. Heaven was not helping. 

The apartments got nicer the closer one got to the center. The tasteful little seaside brownstones at the edge were for the single artists and artisans, with the occasional unit being rented out as a "vacation home" for those closer to the center. They seemed like mansions in their own right to the student, but by the standards of the old world they would have been cramped yet "hip" little places. The ground level seemed to be reserved for shops. Every space featured a shattered window containing some hollowed out cafe, or art gallery, or boutique clothing store. The student felt lost. Kali had wondered aloud how the old world raised their cattle, or butchered their meat, or tanned their hides. The teacher had responded with something about a network of service tunnels and "synthetic materials", but the student hadn't been listening. 

Across the first bridge, the apartment blocks became suburban homes for families, each beautiful and unique. The bars and cafes became sports fields and movie theaters. As they traveled closer to the center, the homes became bigger, more elaborate. Lawns became rolling hills of dust-choked grass, shaded by strange proto-arboroids which in turn became grand estates complete with fountains and hedge mazes. At least this was a paradigm the student recognized. Everything here reeked of the excess of nobility. Nobody works that much useless land by themselves. In the cities prime, this was where the the wealthy found their homes

Across the next bridge, the sweeping estates became high imperial towers. Penthouses complete with legions of servants, fine restaurants, malls, opera houses, casinos, museums and any other luxury the old world could provide. All of it was decked in facades of gold and chrome, all white marble and granite. It was difficult to navigate on foot, clearly made for the fleets of vehicles left abandoned and rotting about the streets. This was the home for the truly wealthy. The student had trouble conceiving of what someone could even do to become this rich. None of it felt real. It was a fantasy, a parody of life. This is where they sat now, the penthouse of a grand high tower. 

The student had assumed heaven was empty, that there were no living things left here. She still wasn't sure if that was correct. Things wandered the corridors of this place. Most slumped motionless in rotting elegant chairs, or sprawled out on the remains of exquisite bedding, but some still had energy enough to amble. They looked like dolls. All, beautifully painted porcelain faces and elegant machinery. Hermetically sealed biomechanical suits inlaid with precious metals and gemstones. The first one the student came across was sat limp against a wall. She nearly jumped when it moved, turning to look at her and mumbling something incomprehensible in a voice barely above a whisper. Movement seemed to cause it distress, its breathing became ragged and strained after the effort of moving its tongue. A mechanical hiss followed by a plume of saccharine chemical-smelling perfume seemed to lull it back to motionlessness. 

It was an all too familiar scent. It was the odor of the sedative-hypnotics the line workers at Isin would use to sleep. Whatever was being pumped into these suits, it was a thousand times stronger, and mixed with something else? Cherry? Liliac? 

The student wondered how long they had been like this. The suits looked ancient. Death could be delayed, sure, but this? Did the old world have the technology for ten-thousand years of prolong? The student shuddered to think what was under that beautiful facade. In all likelihood, it was more cancer then flesh. Just a pile of numb tumescent meat and a mind soaked in opioids and hypnotics to numb the ache and ennui of a meaningless and infinite life. Whatever was left, the student wasn't sure if it could even be considered human. A bare echo of a soul. Just tomb mold on corpses. Unburied, trapped within exquisite sarcophagi. 

At the center of it all the administration building loomed. That hourglass of concrete and gold suspended from the vault of the sky.


	67. The Gargoyle

The bridge to central administration was a killing field. 

For two days and nights the travelers had watched the bridge from their perch, tracking the guard patterns, strategizing. It was broad and flat, with no rubble to provide even the suggestion of cover from the guard towers. Even the dust was gone, blown away by the twin rotor downdraft of the constant gargoyle patrols. Twice they watched some errant husk wander onto the gangway, triggering a wail of alarm from deeper within the citadel. The nearest gargoyle patrol would be summoned, their searchlight faces bathing the poor thing in light enough for the snipers to work by. The snipers worked quick. Every bullet that found its mark left the telltale hissing corrosion of biological rounds, ideal for melting metal and sterilizing rot. The gargoyles would clear the mess. Bones were picked clean with the hurried zeal of an employee on their lunch break. The stains on the bridge were old. 

If the gargoyles needed to provide light, that meant the snipers couldn't work in the dark. It seemed the old world insisted on augmented human guards and synthetic heavies. It was the smart choice, the student thought. Automated defenses were easy to enthrall and expensive to ward. Night vision meant the snipers could be blinded with a flare gun. They couldn't see what was happening on the bridge unless the gargoyles were illuminating it. If they wanted to get in to the administration building, they were going to have to get clever. 

So the student got clever.

\--

The alarm tripped immediately as the student stepped onto the bridge. A thunderously loud klaxon wail with an undercurrent of coded radio chatter. The moment she heard the alarm trip, she hauled as much ass as she could possibly haul, away from the bridge. If she timed this right, the next gargoyle patrol was as far away as it could be. She had about 120 seconds to get out of range. Her heart raced. There was that old excitement. She was in her element. Her limbs flew over the dust and pavement. She was a trapper, and there was game afoot. 

The gargoyle spotted her and sounded an alarm roar, a noise like some rumbling combination of an alligator and a combustion engine. The student was blinded for a moment as its searchlight head fixed on her, pointed radiometry ears swiveling to target her. "Shit" she thought. She might still be in range, she had to make it around the corner. Just a few more feet.

She had underestimated how fast she would be running. She hit the sharp right and stumbled, barely catching herself with her mechanical arm as she skid across the dusty pavement. As she attempted to scramble to her feet she heard a distant gunshot. Nearly a full second passed as the student attempted to regain her center of gravity, when suddenly her left hand exploded into white hot pain. The bullet had missed its mark, but had managed to blow off her left thumb. The student was in the zone. She knew she had been shot, it wasn't the first time, and with reflexes befitting her adrenaline high, she snatched the thumb out of the air and stuck it back into place. It was a process she had done a thousand times before. Bone to bone. Flesh to flesh. Skin to skin. Vein to vein. Nerve to nerve. Back to business. 

She dove around the corner, pulling into as long a somersault to keep her momentum going. The gargoyle rounded the corner with significantly more grace, effortlessly banking on its dorsal rotors as its tail rotor flexed for stability. It dropped, slamming to the ground on a hand and both feet as it levied its rifle-spear at the student, pilot light glowing in the dark. 

"Miss, now!"

A comet of scarlet flame streaked from the dark, crashing against the gargoyles head in a shower of molten metal and plastic. The gargoyle screamed, stunned and temporarily blinded from the impact, the tongue of flame from its spear went wide, drawing a charred streak into the gold and chrome of a nearby skyscraper. As the thing recovered, its pointed little radar instrument ears twitched in rage. It attempted to swing the spear down on the student, its cruel hooked bayonet gleaming in the light of its searing plastic flesh, but Kali was already on it. There was a thunderous clang as she parried the strike, using her heavy tool gauntlets as a fencer would use a buckler. Just a little bit longer. 

"Your thumb is on backwards." Said an insectioid voice, accompanied by a chitinous hand that helped the student to safety. 

"Oh." Said the student, only half hearing what Nico was saying because her heartbeat was so loud. "I can fix it later."

Kali was holding her own easily, maintaining that boxers stance, practically dancing from foot to foot. Though huge, the gargoyle was lanky, built for mobility, and couldn't put much weight behind its strikes. Kali made parry after parry, weaving and deflecting, but never counterattacking. All part of the plan. 

Its movements slowed, every movement facing greater and greater resistance as the sorcerer slowly pressed their will into the gargoyle. First was the communication circuitry. Anything that could transmit or receive information was the first point of attack, but also highly warded for the same reason. It was a simple binary chip architecture. The sorcerer bombarded it with packet requests. Hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, of requests-per-cycle all slamming into firmware action queues and redundant i/o channels, baring a single command in 40 bytes repeated hundreds of millions of times: 

"KNEEL"

The countermeasures buckled under the sheer information. Their master would call the solution inelegant, stack overflows could corrupt useful information, but the sorcerer didn't need to scry into the things mind, they needed it to break. Communications crashed, all non-essential systems in reboot, the sorcerers will flooded in to fill the gaps. Mechanical actions were fed an endless stream of zero inputs, causing them to go dead. The gargoyle was now fighting against its own augments. Slowly, they pressed into the synthetic nerves. These were a challenge. The nerve pathways were grown rather than built, so each intrusion was unique, but they followed patterns of growth that could be simulated ahead of time. Even with its neuro-augments the gargoyle was running at barely a thousand floating point operations per second, the sorcerer was running hot at four billion. Every nerve was traced, recorded, simulated, and extrapolated upon, telling the sorcerer exactly which neurons to flood for the most efficient capture. Their fans strained against the heat being generated by their brain, but they had done it. The spell held. The gargoyle was completely immobilized. 

They had to hurry. The sorcerer had said synthetic nerves took around ten times the processing power to capture, and they couldn't run this hot for very long without risking brain damage. Kali lifted them gently, careful not to touch their scalding head, their body locked in a cross-legged position to conserve focus. Nico drew the hard-light tool and sank it into the immobilized gargoyle, right between the first and second vertebrae, muttering to himself as he remembered which switches he had to flip on the handle. Kali placed the sorcerer on the things back, holding them in place as Nico plugged a cable into the knife, and the other end into the sorcerers access port. 

The cooling fans wound down, settling into a more reasonable temperature as the sorcerer slowly switched their control from wireless to wired. A few moments passed as the rest of the travelers waited, poised to strike down a suddenly un-enthralled gargoyle. 

"Statement: Sudouser status achieved: software lobotomy complete: I am now in direct control."

"Can it fly?" Asked the student. 

"Statement: aviation systems normal: radiometry damage minimal: intruder alert disengaged: all signs green. Hop on."

"Wait." Said the student. "Can you fly this thing?"

"Statement: Most likely. Addendum: Urgent: We have approximately four minutes until I must switch to auxiliary batteries. Hop on."

The group did as they were asked. The gargoyle lifted off with none of its former grace. It lurched from the ground with all the drunken coordination of a young foal attempting to stand for the first time. The adrenaline was back, but this time in the form of subdued panic. There was little to grab on to, but the teacher was able to wrap her legs around the things waist, serving as a makeshift seatbelt for the rest of the group. 

Once some proper altitude was gained, the turbulence decreased somewhat. The student tried not to look down. 

\--

The gargoyle touched down with all the elegance of a lead puppet being dropped on the concrete. The impact was rough enough to dislodge the group and send them tumbling off the dead gargoyles back. None of them cared. They were out of the air, laying splayed randomly on some disused balcony on the highest floors of the administration building. They had made it.


End file.
